


Silver Lining

by LanternJawedStudmuffin



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Age Swap, Alternate Universe - Detectives, Angst, Blood, Dark Humor, Depression, Eventual Fluff, Ghosts, M/M, Paranormal, References to Abuse, References to BDSM, References to self-harm, Supernatural Elements, ghost character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-13
Updated: 2015-08-13
Packaged: 2018-04-14 15:00:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 21,906
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4568895
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LanternJawedStudmuffin/pseuds/LanternJawedStudmuffin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>(Happy 8/13, y'all!)</p><p>Private detective Roxas Hikari has an easier time with cases in which he can talk to his lead witness directly, especially when the witness is the missing person he's looking for. Makes for an open-and-shut case, really.</p><p>This one should've been the same, if his missing person hadn't turned out to be dead. And also, really unhelpful.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Silver Lining

**Author's Note:**

> 'Sup lovely people!
> 
> We pulled together to get something out for AkuRoku Day! We couldn't let our favourite not-actual-holiday pass without managing to do something for it.
> 
> Just to let any readers of our ongoing works know, we should be able to start writing again soon (tentatively next week?) to put an end to our involuntary hiatus. We hope that you enjoy this in the meantime! If you aren't a reader of our other stuff and are a fan of the R-rated content... I urge you to check those out?
> 
> Also, quick note about the 'age swap' tag on this story; by that we mean, Roxas is older than Axel, but he's like... 31, and Axel is 26.
> 
> Enjoy, and happy 8/13!

The subject was twenty-six, male, a university student pursuing a PhD in sciences. He had a weekend job, lived on his own, and was a good two cities away from his mother, who'd made the call in to a private detective when the subject's workplace called her to report that he hadn't been to work for two weeks.

Roxas's morning coffee was mostly drunk and, after the long drive into the city, cold, resting in his cup holder beside a packet of manila folders. He put those back in his locked glove box for security as he pulled up onto the appropriate avenue, coasting at a slugging ten miles per hour. There was no one else sharing the road with him; he wanted to get a good look at the neighborhood while he found a place to temporarily ditch his car.

The only place to park was up the street, wedged between two old-model vehicles in what could only be called an adequate parallel parking job. Roxas took the house key from the provided envelope as he walked up to the small split-level house, taking in everything – no car in sight, no lights on within, and a build-up of newspapers on the front steps and patch of lawn.

It made a good impression. Not in a _positive_ way, but in the way that meant Roxas wouldn't unlock the door and find that his 'missing person' investigation was actually just really good at avoiding phone calls from relatives.

He pocketed the envelope marked 'A. Jenova' and peered through the windows for any signs of life. The lack of movement encouraged him to make a cursory check for broken windows or forced locks (no signs of home invasion) and circle around the house to check the back.

Open windows on the second floor, he noticed. The tiny strip of a backyard didn't have much to mark it as being individual, save for an ashtray left just outside the kitchen door. Roxas paused, dropping to a crouch to inspect it.

“So, you're a smoker...or at least used to entertaining for them,” he murmured, trying to make a guess at how long it'd been unused. It wasn't clean, but had obviously been left out to endure the elements for a little while; some of the ashes had been blown or washed away, perhaps.

“Money on smoker, though.” Roxas righted himself, reaching up to experimentally give the backdoor a quick check. To his surprise, it gave with only a slight push, left unlocked.

He slipped the key back into his pocket with a quiet, “Shit.”

Roxas's ears were pretty keen, after encountering enough bullshit to keep him almost permanently on his toes. There was no burglar alarm, when he carefully stepped inside, which meant he could listen that much harder for any signs of someone in the house.

No other visible markers of an intrusion, he decided with a quick sweep of the kitchen, and if there had been recently they probably would have keeled over right inside the door.

The place was pretty rank – probably more so in this room than the others. If anyone had broken in, he could safely assume they'd left a while ago.

So, the door had to have been left unlocked by an occupant. An occupant whose cleanliness habits weren't a priority. He'd left dishes in the sink with food still caked onto the surface, obviously not anticipating that he wouldn't be around to prevent them from getting this bad. Pulling his scarf up over his nose, he went to inspect the rot.

“This has got to be longer than two weeks,” he mumbled to himself. He supposed, if they'd been left to sit for a while even _before_ Axel went missing... But, he honestly hoped that wasn't the case.

Roxas drew away from the sink, and didn't hear someone say, “Don't judge. I've been too busy for housekeeping.”

The bread on the counter was thoroughly green, and the subject of Roxas's next observation. It was sitting on the counter by the toaster, barely consumed and properly sealed.

“Of all the shit someone might want to take, you're checking out my moldy bread?”

Roxas's ears were still sharp, and all he heard was the crinkle of the plastic as he leaned in to check the expiration date. Roughly a week past.

That seemed to line up pretty well with the stinking dishes. Roxas withdrew his phone, which functioned as a digital notepad whenever he was on a job. “Permissible, I guess,” he mused, and put the phone back in his pocket to put on a pair of vinyl gloves. As he tugged them on, he bent sideways to get a look at the amount of dust on the counter.

Unbeknownst to him, Axel remained in the doorway to his kitchen, one eyebrow arched and eyes keenly following Roxas's every move.

“Nothing more recent than...three weeks, maybe?” Roxas had straightened up and opened the cupboard above his head. “Still, no guarantee you're particularly vigilant with your groceries...”

“Give me _some_ credit, would you,” Axel defended himself, but as he expected, there was no response.

“Basics,” Roxas was talking to himself. “Cereal, ramen noodles, prepackaged meals. Clearly not any aspirations of being a master chef.”

“You've clearly never gotten inventive with a ninety-nine cent pack of ramen,” Axel observed as Roxas moved on to the fridge, expecting that he'd open it and start commenting on his choice of perishables. Instead, he was inspecting the vast array of coupons tacked onto it, kept on the fridge by an assortment of business magnets – the sort that someone would get for free at a hairdresser's or in the mail.

Roxas didn't see any worthwhile connections to make over those, his focus drawn to a signed cheque for two thousand dollars tacked to the freezer. Lifting the magnet to slide the cheque out, Roxas withdrew a slim pair of reading glasses from his jacket pocket to inspect it.

“From the parents.” He zeroed in on the signature first – from an 'S. Jenova', undoubtedly the internationally renowned Shin-Ra businessman – and then the date. “Makes sense, your job definitely doesn't pay you this. So...”

Taking out his phone again, he snapped a picture of the check, and then replaced it on the fridge. “You've definitely been here sometime this month, to put this here. Parents live too far to give this in person, probably came by mail...”

If Axel hadn't concluded that Roxas was a detective by that point, the fact that he immediately went to go find his trash bin would have narrowed down his list of ideas from 'really incompetent burglar' and 'mid-day drunkard'. He stepped into the kitchen, keeping a bit of distance but craning his neck to see past the other man. At least he'd taken out the garbage before all _this_ – there wasn't much in there other than an empty cigarette carton and the torn-open envelope.

“Confirms the smoker theory,” Roxas removed both trash items to document for evidence photos.

“I know, the cigarettes will kill me, right?”

“Generic brand, could get it anywhere. Not much point in asking beyond the nearest convenience stores,” Roxas continued, putting the carton back to turn the envelope over a couple of times. “... Didn't really expect a date,” but there was enough in print to get his attention, “Corporate return address, not from home. Still, little weird the guy who runs one of the most technologically advanced companies in the world sends his money by snail mail.”

“Less 'weird', more 'pointed',” Axel's gaze strayed to the fridge, remaining perfectly still as Roxas walked by him and missed his shoulder by less than an inch.

“I'm probably going to regret this,” Roxas murmured to himself, and opened the fridge door with a reflexive grimace. “Yep. Ugh, the police get to empty out your milk. Not in my job description.”

“Their funeral,” Axel echoed the sentiment, coming up closer behind Roxas to look him over. “So, I've ruled you out as the worst burglar _ever_ , which makes you...”

“Barely enough in here for _one_ person,” Roxas's thoughts were still coming out in a monologue. “No live-ins you're hiding from the parents, then. You really had this entire house to yourself.”

“Private detective. You're not a cop,” Axel snorted. “Still, guess it's a good thing I took the weed with me.”

With a sigh, Roxas shut the fridge. “So, you've got this much money stuck to your fridge and haven't touched it yet, not a great case for a runaway.”

Axel frowned.

While he worked through his thoughts, Roxas turned to the fold-out kitchen table and pulled out a chair to collapse into. “You barely work part-time, but you have a rental house to yourself that your parents front the cost for. Gonna go with spoiled single child.”

“Well, you're not wrong.” Axel's frown had deepened, leaning down to get extremely up close and personal with Roxas's face. It wasn't like he could see him, Axel reasoned, so he could get whatever view he wanted. It helped him hear, anyway, as Roxas's voice was dropping in volume while he mulled over what facts he had.

“You've at least been back to work since you've been back here. Commuted from somewhere else. Girlfriend's place, maybe...?”

“Swing and a miss.”

“No good. Not a contact anyone knows about. Makes an ideal place to hide, and absolutely no help to me,” Roxas shook his head and took off his glasses, rubbing his eyes. “Either way, something changed. If you were going to skip out on work intentionally, you'd go for the cheque. So, Axel...” Roxas tilted his head back and shut his eyes. “Where are you?”

“You barely tried to pursue the girlfriend idea,” Axel complained, drawing back. “Maybe it's an illicit affair with a wealthy older woman. Have some imagination.”

Roxas caught the tail end of a word, almost. His head jerked back up sharply, glancing towards the ceiling.

He _had_ heard something. Distantly. Hadn't he?

Axel stared. “Holy shit, did you hear me?”

Slowly, Roxas got to his feet and looked down the hallway, keeping his eyes on it as he backed towards the door and pushed the lock down. Axel shadowed his movements, more earnest than before, but voice once again unheard.

“Dude, I could be a criminal or someone who broke in. Was locking the door smart? _Did_ you hear me? What are you doing?”

Roxas was reaching into his back pocket, and Axel went right through the kitchen table in an attempt to see what he was doing, incorporeal and leaving it visibly undisturbed. Roxas had removed something small enough to fit into his hand, listening hard now and keeping it at his side.

“That better not be a weapon,” Axel protested sardonically. “You could kill me in my own home, out of paranoia.”

“Just had to wait 'til I made enough noise to raise the dead before you'd start talking, didn't you,” Roxas groused under his breath, beginning to creep towards the kitchen door.

“That was a little tasteless.”

Axel followed him into the living room, casting a brief wistful look to the silver lighter sitting on his coffee table. He could use that right about now. The place was a mess of university textbooks and paper, his bookshelf loaded down with school texts from over the years, and the mat by his front door was covered in mail that had been pushed through the slot.

Roxas was still on the alert, but wasn't putting his investigation on hold. He made his way over the mail, head still perked and passing the narrow staircase to the second floor.

“Do me a favor and put any new coupons on my fridge?”

He still didn't hear anything. For all his caution, the most likely scenario was that he'd intruded in the home of someone who was _still there_ , and would be more alarmed by his presence than the reverse. Pausing at the foot of the stairs, Roxas sighed soundlessly. “This is stupid...” he tilted his head, and called up to the second floor, “Axel...?”

For reasons he couldn't even understand, Axel froze and kept silent. He was suddenly sure that he'd be heard if he spoke, again, and he couldn't tell if that was what he wanted, yet.

He didn't want to have to answer questions, of which there'd be many.

“Axel Jenova?” Roxas was still trying. “I'm Detective Hikari. Your mother hired me to take a look at the place, see if I could find out anything that might give us your whereabouts.” He paused, and his voice became hard. “If you're up there and you're not Axel, you're gonna wish you were.”

“My _mother?_ ” Axel was equal parts pensive and surprised. “Not-...?”

Roxas jumped visibly, not expecting to hear a voice so close by. The words had been clear, this time, and _right there_ , but something was...off...

“... Hello?” Unseen, Axel waved a hand carefully in Roxas's face.

He jerked back, eyes wide and darting around in visible confusion. It was like someone was talking right in front of him, but with an odd muffled or echoing quality. His eyes found the spot he thought he heard the voice come from, but then went rapidly around the room when he didn't see anything, whispering, “What the _fuck_...”

Silence met his disbelief, as Axel began paced around him in slight frustration.

“Alright,” Roxas tried cautiously. “I can hear you. Where are you?”

“Come on... How do I do this...”

Behind him; the voice was _definitely_ behind him, but when Roxas turned his head, he was still clearly talking to himself. “Security system? Really advanced sci-fi-esque security system?” He was throwing out guesses that no one could confirm, the ridiculousness inspiring him to mutter, “Or an extremely creepy parrot...”

“ _See me_ ,” Axel experimentally put a hand right through Roxas's shoulder.

“What do you think I'm trying to do?” Roxas responded irritably, shuddering at the barest and strangest sensation through his arm and torso.

A muscle twitch, he guessed. A weird muscle twitch.

“You can _hear_ me though, right?”

“Sort of,” he answered, eyes still roving around the living room. Maybe... Maybe this person was injured and couldn't move, stuck somewhere that wasn't immediately obvious. “You're not very clear. Are you in the room with me?”

“... Right behind you,” the voice responded, and there was a note of amusement to it, now. Roxas immediately turned, and narrowed his eyes.

He was starting to get the feeling that he was being played.

“Can you at least tell me if you're Axel?”

“I don't know if I still am.”

His voice was clearer, that time, and if Roxas didn't know better he would have sworn it came from the blank space he was staring at. “Still are? What does that mean?”

“Semantics.”

This was getting exasperating. Roxas fought back a sigh; he was too old for games like this. “Can you tell me if you're hurt? Do you need some help?”

“I don't think so.” The voice was on the move, nearer to the pile of mail now.

“... Okay. Well, Axel, you don't have to tell me where you are, but since you _are_ here, my job is done. I have to call your mother to let her know.”

“I'm sure she'll be relieved,” Axel sounded sarcastic. “You probably shouldn't, though. You'll look fucking insane, when they find out.”

“I don't know what that means,” Roxas replied, doing his best to remain calm and professional. “I'm a detective, not a mind-reader.”

“Are you a medium?”

“Excuse me?” Roxas's eyebrows drew together.

“You know. Do you talk to dead people?”

The voice was closer again, damn near right in front of him, but Roxas didn't try to look for the source this time. His gaze evened. “Oh, I see. Hey, it's not my business why you don't want to be found, but unless you have reason to believe your family is endangering you, they have every right to call the police down and flush you out.”

Axel snorted, and the lights flickered. Accidentally.

Roxas twitched. “Very funny,” he started searching for a light switch, guessing that he must be there, playing with it just to be cliche.

“Look, forget I said anything,” Axel watched him search, stock-still again. “Go back to talking about my girlfriend. I was getting a kick out of that.”

“If I do, will you come out of wherever you're hiding?”

“I'd love to.”

Bitterly, Roxas decided that his former assessment of Axel being a spoiled single child was spot-on – at twenty-six, he should have been too old for jokes like this. The light switch was in plain view on the wall and obviously left alone, so he moved on to start looking for a fuse box. “The girlfriend thing might be a shot in the dark,” he opened a closet, finding only a leather jacket and shoes. “Your emergency contact is someone named Saix, but so far no one's been able to reach him, including me. Actually, my next stop was going to be his workplace – the office building, for K.H Enterprises.”

“You did your homework,” Axel said, and was glad he couldn't be seen right then. “I doubt he'll talk to you.”

“How about you tell me about Saix?”

“You're a detective. Don't you have a hunch?”

“You know, detectives are supposed to work on a need-only basis,” Roxas responded, finding a door that he thought might lead to the basement. If he was in here, that could explain where his voice was coming from, if not the quality of his voice – but, there was only a washer and dryer alongside some plastic storage boxes. “If you're here, you're my source of information...”

“I'm not really here, is the thing.”

Roxas did a quick glance around for the fuse box, anyway, but closed the door when it proved fruitless. “Look. Axel. I don't think you want me poking around in your stuff any more than I want to be doing it.”

“It really doesn't matter to me, anymore.”

He was starting to feel foolish, but he still addressed the house. “Is there anyone I can contact for you? Someone you would rather speak to?”

“I don't know if anyone else could even hear me...”

Frustrated, Roxas went to sit on the stairs. “I can't help you if you're only going to be vague with me,” he tried, and failed, not to snap.

“I'm being literal.” His voice was close again. “You know what I did yesterday? Screamed. Non-stop. Lot of foul language that'd offend the neighbors, and you know what happened? Nothing.”

Truthfully, that left Roxas a bit unsettled. “Did you try to approach anyone?”

“Can't. Can't leave this house. Sort of ironic...”

Paranoia. Axel was paranoid; that had to be it. “What happens if you leave the house?” Roxas questioned cautiously.

“I physically _can't_. This'll go quicker whenever you decide I'm being honest.”

That strange sensation hit Roxas's full body, and he pulled his scarf tighter following the spasm. “'Honest'? Which part are you being honest about?”

He was ready for a response, but not for that voice to be right by his ear. “All of it,” Axel murmured, and Roxas jerked forward so violently that he nearly lost his balance, whipping around and staring at the step behind him.

Roxas took a second for his heart to start beating again and for his lungs to remember how to expel air. “So, you want me to believe I'm talking to a ghost,” he said breathlessly.

“Yeah, I had trouble believing it, too.”

There was still _nothing there_. Roxas's gaze didn't move from where he'd pinned it, on the dusty faux-wood surface. “I can draw about a thousand conclusions before I settle on 'ghost', Axel.”

“Let's hear some.”

“Okay,” Roxas slowly turned to sit the way he was before, reluctant to turn his back even though he knew better. “First of all, you've managed to evade everyone who's tried to contact you while still at home. You've made it very convincing that it's been abandoned for weeks. Ergo, you're good at hiding.”

“Do go on. Tell me why I left the rent money, I'm eager to hear about that part.”

“That's possibility two. It's actually much more likely that you _did_ abandon the place for a while, and came here shortly before I did to pick up a few things – including the rent check – before running off again. Explains the unlocked door. Back door tells me you didn't want to be seen entering the house, unlocked tells me you didn't intend to be here long.”

“That's good,” Axel commended. “Sounds likely.”

“And then you hear a stranger come in. That'd freak anyone out. But it wasn't until I said I was looking for you that you panicked.”

“Any theories as to why I jumped ship?”

He wasn't sure what Axel was getting out of this, even as far as entertainment went, but Roxas answered. “Nothing solid enough to make a case yet. The 'finding you' part kind of makes it irrelevant.”

“Damn. I was really hoping for your insight.”

Axel was unaware that he'd become very hazily visible, while they spoke. Roxas had hunched forward a little on the step, equally oblivious to it.

“As to how you're projecting your voice...” he rubbed his jaw thoughtfully. “I'm really not the expert there. I also haven't searched much of the house yet, and you'd obviously know it better than me. It'd take me ages to search out any kind of sound equipment, if you hid it well.”

“Who the hell just has sound equipment lying around the house? Theater majors?”

“If anyone would, it's the well-funded, reclusive son of a major corporate head, going on the run,” Roxas grinned faintly. “It's an interesting tactic. You try to convince me I'm hearing what your parents or the police can't so I won't call them. Eventually I leave, and you're free to get what you came for and run. Very creative, but it's a bit much? Personally, I think you'd be better off talking things out with your folks.”

“Wow,” Axel said softly. “That's really inspirational.”

“I know you're not going to take me seriously...”

“No, no, this would really turn my life around if not for the unusual circumstances.”

Roxas exhaled. This day would probably mark the most he's ever sighed on the job, he thought. “Can you at least tell me what you're trying to hide from?”

“I am literally behind you. I think I'm doing my damndest not to hide from anything, right now.”

“I know you're not behind me,” Roxas bit impatiently. “Axel, please. You're an adult, I can't force you to speak to anyone you don't want to. But, if I walk out of here now, I haven't done my job. Private detective isn't the most booming business at the moment.”

“Then by all means,” Axel sighed. “Keep searching my house.”

Roxas's hands clapped against his thighs, feeling rested enough to get up but no less irritated.

“Let me know if you have any more interesting theories,” Axel commented. “I want to hear what'll be printed in my obit.”

Preparing to do another search of the living room without added distraction, Roxas turned a little.

And then he froze.

Axel appeared to be sitting a few steps up and leaning tiredly against his knees, watching Roxas with eyes that were maybe a shadow of what was supposed to be green. He knew how they were supposed to look – Axel's mother had shown him a picture.

He was also transparent.

“You look like you've seen a ghost.” Axel's tone was flat, unimpressed with himself. If only it hadn't needed to be said.

“Holy _fuck_.” It was like the moment of disbelief had shattered and left Roxas physically reeling, professionalism lost and falling backwards.

“That was cheap, I know,” Axel said by way of an apology. “So you _can_ see me now, right?”

Roxas stared at him, speechless.

“... I'll take that as a yes.”

He continued to stare, blinking a few times in rapid succession in attempt to bring his hazy form into focus. It was fruitless, but there was enough of him to recognize – Axel Jenova. Twenty-six. University student, living on his own...

“... Never mind,” Roxas finally summoned his voice. “I know what happened.”

“Does this theory involve drugs?”

“I fell asleep reading your file, and now I'm probably late to meet your mother.” He was sounding a little unhinged.

“I hope not, for your sake. She's got a wicked talent for making you feel ashamed of yourself.”

“Of all the cliche dreams to have,” Roxas groaned.

“Oh, I'm _sorry_ ,” Axel rolled his eyes and got up, going through the banister. “This must be really hard for _you_.”

Roxas rubbed his eyes again, hard.

“Since you haven't woken up, though, feels safe to assume that I'm still actually dead,” Axel moved like he was about to offer him a hand up, but then remembered himself.

“Of course,” Roxas pressed his thumb and forefinger harder against his eyes. “The only logical conclusion this all comes down to is visiting spirits of the dead.”

“Great! We're on the same page.”

Finally getting to his feet, Roxas removed his glasses again, quickly testing to see if putting them on made Axel any more visible. It didn't. “You're not even technically a missing person, yet. Now you're supposed to be dead?”

“I'm not a missing person?!” Axel sounded offended. “I've been gone for _weeks_ , you're telling me no one at school reported that?!”

Blinking, he pocketed the glasses again. “I only know what your mother told me yesterday. Your workplace called her to say you've missed four shifts in a row and they couldn't reach your first emergency contact. Technically it's on her to report you missing, which I assume was her next move if I found nothing.”

Axel looked away, muttering, “I feel so valued.”

There was no reason for Roxas to feel guilty, especially considering he wasn't willing to buy this was real. Yet... “Alright, there's two possibilities here. One far more likely than the other.”

“Do tell.” Axel was sounding a little surly, now.

“One: you're dead and I just happen to be having contact with an actual ghost. Conveniently,” Roxas sighed. Definitely upping the total and making this day a contender for the sigh-count, but it wasn't real so it didn't really matter. “Second: My brain has decided to go all Hollywood-detective and imagine talking to you, so I can brainstorm in my sleep. In that case, I don't know why I decided to make you dead. Sorry.”

“I'll find it in me to forgive you,” Axel replied, sarcastically cordial.

“So, until I prove one of those, I'm going to treat this as real,” Roxas decided. “Might as well find out what I can.”

“I appreciate it.”

“You're my best lead, in either case,” Roxas removed his phone again.

“Aw, come on.” The rancor had passed and Axel was back to seeking humor in the situation. “You're not just gonna _ask_ me what happened, are you?”

“That's the quickest way to solving this,” Roxas pointed out. “Can you tell me how you died?”

“It was very traumatic,” Axel replied mildly. “I'm having a hard time remembering.”

“What about the circumstances?”

“It's more fun hearing about what you think,” Axel smirked, and Roxas gave him a look of disbelief.

“You're either the least helpful ghost ever, or I'm really out of ideas.”

“You don't get much entertainment from being dead. C'mon... Indulge me.”

“If I've now got a murder case on my hands, I'm definitely obligated to call the police,” he rolled his eyes.

Axel sounded grave. “But you need evidence, first.”

“You're not wrong,” Roxas amended. “... Can you answer me one thing honestly?”

“Sure. Maybe.”

“Is your body in the house?”

“No,” Axel immediately shook his head, perhaps sensing the trepidation there. “You won't stumble on a corpse, promise.”

“Least that makes me slightly less negligent for not calling them yet...” Roxas muttered.

“Look on the bright side. Now this isn't an invasion of my privacy. Consider yourself a guest.”

“Thanks? I guess.” Roxas's shoulders squared. “So, let me make sure I have this right. You want me to solve your own murder rather than give me the facts?”

“Yeah. Sounds fun, right?” Axel grinned broadly. Roxas could see his teeth, and the hair behind his skull at the same time, and the wall behind him. He felt a little cold.

“This is definitely my idea of a party,” Roxas tore his gaze away.

“I'll at least tell you when you're going cold. So, let's get to it!” Axel motioned as though he was clapping his hands together, but there was no sound.

“I appreciate it.” Roxas turned back towards the mail pile, trying to work through the bizarre situation and the feeling of being watched. This time when he spoke aloud to himself and thumbed through the pile, he was acutely aware of someone else listening. “Mostly junk. Advertisements. Shin-Ra's summer internship program,” he picked up a thick booklet.

“Ah, yeah. Get one every year,” Axel leaned over him to look as well, having been unable to effect the pile and see what he got over the past couple of weeks. “Keep the adverts, sometimes they load 'em up with deals.”

Roxas raised an eyebrow at him, and he barked a short, embarrassed laugh.

“Or, uh, I guess it's not relevant anymore.”

“But you do – uh, did make a habit of keeping coupons and staying up to date on store promotions,” Roxas put the booklet down. “Interesting.”

“That's interesting?” Axel arched an eyebrow, and did it in a way that put Roxas's skeptical expression to shame.

“Mhm. I'm putting together a profile here, oh – ” Roxas picked up several more booklets. “You have a lot of universities that want your consideration...”

Axel's fingers passed through one. “I'll have to weigh my options carefully. Don't want to jump into anything.”

He kept his comments to himself, already picking up on Axel's brand of sarcasm. “So you didn't actually go to any of these schools? You weren't applying?”

“That really wasn't up to me,” Axel shrugged.

“...I see,” Roxas murmured, and shuffled through the pile. “Huh. Very interesting.”

“What else?” Axel probed. “Tell me shit. _Theorize._ ”

“I'm not doing this for entertainment value,” Roxas shot at him. “Just noticed there's no bills in all of this. Guessing your bills go straight to your parents.”

“Yeah, for the most part,” he confirmed.

“And what about the other part?”

“I pay my phone bill.”

“Online?”

“'Course.”

Roxas nodded. “Thought so. Explains why this investigation took so long to happen. People start looking for you much sooner if you owe them money.”

“Should've spent it on another tattoo, I knew it,” Axel snapped his fingers. Once again, there was no sound to it.

“I'd say live and learn, but that's not exactly applicable,” Roxas put the mail down, and Axel snorted.

“Hey, that was good. ...By the way...”

“Hm?”

“You're learning shit about me, but I don't even know your name.”

“I said it earlier,” Roxas replied, but then felt he should backtrack. “Though, I don't know for sure if you were in the room...”

“I'll be honest, I was in a very 'me' space at that point,” Axel had a searching expression. “Detective something-or-other, right?”

“Roxas Hikari,” he half-grinned.

“I was _this_ close. One or two syllables off.”

“It was a good effort,” Roxas slid a supermarket flyer out from the very bottom of the pile. “Monday the seventh... Safe to assume that's fairly close to the last day you were here...bodily?”

“...Sounds right,” Axel's lighthearted tone dropped.

“Do you feel like telling me where you were between that date and when people stopped seeing you?”

“We established that I'm here for more of a clarification and observation role,” he was quick to deny, needlessly stubborn.

Another sigh was on its way.

“Want to tell me what the rent on this place is, then?” Roxas put the flyer back.

“You saw the check, right? That was rhetorical, I watched you. That's my rent money.”

“All of it?” Roxas sought to clarify.

“Two grand,” Axel confirmed. “I literally just hand it off to my landlady.”

Roxas whistled low. “That's steep.”

“For a house all to myself?” Axel shrugged. “Cheapest you can get while still being close enough to school.”

“Steep for student living,” Roxas snapped a picture of the mail pile. “Alright, so your parents receive all your bills, except the phone, and mail you a check for your full rent every month. And I'm going to go out on a limb and guess they had a role in picking this place.”

“That's a sturdy limb to be out on.”

“But I'm willing to bet they don't pay your day to day expenses,” Roxas went on. “Food, travel, clothes, cigarettes... Hence the penny pinching.”

“Right again,” Axel sighed deeply. “I'd kill for a cigarette right now...”

“Didn't realize addictions would carry over into the afterlife.”

“It's not a craving so much as... It'd be something to _do_. The most I can occupy myself with is – ” he reached out a hand, expression becoming one of concentration as he made the lights flicker.

“Huh,” Roxas's eyes traveled up to the lights. “So that is a thing.”

“Wonder if I can do anything else cliche...”

“You could always entertain yourself by telling me a story,” Roxas tried. “Your life story, for example.”

“Sounds boring,” Axel dismissed. “I think it was one of those things where you had to be there.”

“Right.” Roxas had first-hand experience with being stubborn for the sake of stubbornness, but this felt just plain stupid. “So, from what I can tell your parents are investing a lot of money in letting you live this way, but other than nudging you with university pamphlets and company internships, don't seem to be doing a lot of micromanaging to ensure their investment pays off. What does that tell me...”

Axel turned away while Roxas mused, starting to wander absently around his own living room.

“You're obviously not the ideal heir, but for all I know they might not have that in mind for you,” Roxas hadn't noticed him move. “Anyway, not being a well publicized heir makes a kidnapping a lot less likely. Plus, no one called for a ransom. So, you're clutching onto the purse strings pretty tight, but not enough to ask for shopping money. You've got as much freedom there as your budget allows...”

Axel almost laughed at something he'd said, but it wasn't obvious what. Another moment of thought didn't give Roxas any solid conclusions.

“That's about all your mail can tell me, I think,” he mused, as Axel managed to make loud, echoing footsteps clatter.

“Oh shit – _yes_ ,” he hissed victoriously. “Check that out, that's textbook ghost stuff.”

Roxas paused and rolled his eyes up at the ceiling. “I'll start checking upstairs, then.”

“I'll come with in a second, I wanna see if I can leave bloody hand prints on the windows.”

If anything, this was lending credence to the idea that the ghost was real; Roxas didn't think he could dream up one this obnoxious. “I'm not responsible for cleaning that,” he informed Axel, starting his way upstairs. He was more likely to get relevant information from the bedroom.

True to his word, Axel started off by trying to press a hand to the glass, but found once again that he couldn't pass through it. He stared out the window as Roxas's shoes squeaked over the laminate flooring.

Both the bathroom and bedroom door were open, and the landing only led to those two rooms – not that Roxas didn't check the towel closet, just to be sure. In a strange way, he kind of hoped that Axel would finish mucking around downstairs and catch up before he started poking around his bedroom...

So, the bathroom. Roxas pushed the open door a little wider and zeroed in on the small garbage can.

It was overflowing with bloodied bandages.

“Oh, shit,” he breathed, kneeling to inspect them and reaching for a new pair of gloves, replacing the ones he was wearing. “These are old...”

He started pushing the bandages aside with one hand, looking for anything that might indicate what type of wound they even came from. Some of the gauze was pretty badly stained right through, but some of the lesser-soiled one had ring-like formations on them – dots of blood in a squat oval shape, several inches in diameter.

Roxas's brow furrowed, snapping pictures with his free hand.

There wasn't anything else in the trash, and he straightened up when he ran out of new things to find, turning the gloves inside out as he removed them and dropping them into the sink. The medicine cabinet above it was slightly ajar, and he opened it the rest of the way once his other gloves were back on.

The bottom drawer was almost standard – a shaving kit, but also eyeliner and concealer. For the most part, though, the cabinet was stuffed full of bottles, all of them in varying states of use. Roxas turned them to check for names and labels, opening a couple to check the amount inside.

“And you were looking to start a pharmacy, apparently...”

Axel was coming silently up the stairs, taking up a spot to lurk in the bathroom doorway. Slowly, Roxas put the bottle he was inspecting down to pick up the eyeliner.

“Yours, or for someone who might be here often...?” he questioned to no one, remembering the photograph again. His eyes _had_ been really striking...

“Do you want to start separating shit into piles?” Axel suggested. “One for me, one for my theoretical girlfriend?”

Roxas jumped, shutting the cabinet on reflex and staring into the mirror. All that showed in the reflective surface was a shine where Axel was standing, so subtle he would have dismissed it if he wasn't looking for it. “ _God_ you are good at sneaking up on me.”

“You get stealthy when you die,” Axel explained.

“Going to find out first-hand if you keep giving me heart attacks,” Roxas sighed. “But more to the point – care to explain this?” He pointed to the trash.

“... No?” Axel responded, like he was figuring out whether or not that was the right answer.

“You're really going to make me guess about that?” Roxas demanded.

“Maybe I cut myself shaving.”

“At the jugular, maybe,” Roxas started rubbing his eyes again. “Obvious conclusion is self-harm, but the blood patterns on the cloth don't make sense. It's more patches than streaks, and you don't use that much gauze to wrap wrists or legs. Plus no blades in the trash...”

“I actually really want to see if you guess this one,” Axel smirked.

Roxas continued, back on a roll with thinking aloud. “Anyway, your painkillers are used, but not empty. You weren't planning to overdose, you were using them for their intended purpose. A lot of them. And I dunno if cutters have changed, but the ones I've known wouldn't take anything to dull the pain. I certainly didn't.”

That hung in the air like smoke, stifling. Axel was visibly caught off-guard.

“... Sorry,” he said finally, not knowing what else he _could_ say.

“It might be stupid, but I'm feeling sort of obligated to share, seeing as I'm getting deep into your business,” Roxas shrugged, apparently far less affected.

“Do you do this with all your investigations, or do I get special treatment on account of my recent demise?” Axel was trying to get his easy tone back.

“I rarely meet the people I'm investigating,” Roxas pointed out.

“Special treatment,” Axel nodded. “Score.”

“If you say so,” Roxas didn't argue. “Anyway, you know at least two things about me now.”

“Three,” he corrected, eyes flickering.

“Well, I wasn't going to count my name, and this is getting off-topic,” Roxas turned back towards the garbage can. “This much bandaging is enough to wrap around your torso a few times. Or,” he got quieter, “someone else's.”

Unexpectedly, Axel snorted.

“That's funny?” Roxas stiffened.

“No – sorry,” Axel shook his head. “Trying to picture something.”

That left him faintly unsettled, eyeing Axel suspiciously. “Well... You haven't been in any hospital in the city in the past month, and whatever happened, you clearly patched yourself up.”

“Hospital's pricey,” Axel folded his arms.

“Going by this...” Roxas gestured to the medicine cabinet. “Injures weren't unexpected for you... This wasn't the first time.”

“Which would've made the hospital _really_ pricey,” Axel looked to the cabinet. After several beats of silence in which Roxas formed a dozen theories – none of them aligning very well with his former picture of Axel – the ghost in question started looking at him again. “You moving on, yet?”

“I have to, to make sense of this,” Roxas took a step towards the door, but hesitated. It took him a second to figure out why.

“... Oh,” Axel moved aside.

“Thanks,” Roxas exited the bathroom, glad to avoid having to walk through Axel. He'd correctly theorized that the unusual sensations before were from passing through him, and he desperately did _not_ want to do that if it was avoidable.

The bedroom was kind of a mess, with more bloodied bandages by the bed and a bottle of antiseptic on top of one of the nightstands. The closed laptop on the bed blinked steadily, still plugged in and in sleep mode, and there were even more books stacked on the floor by a metal basket.

The bandages took priority, he decided, and went to check them out.

“More of those ring patterns,” Roxas observed without touching them, while Axel 'sat' on the bed beside him.

“I still like my shaving theory,” Axel chimed in. The messy bedcovers were lifted right through him as Roxas turned to check the sheets, having spotted a couple of very obvious tiny bloodstains. Thorough washing had only done so much to dull the droplets.

“You're bled on these before...but in drops...” Roxas leaned in close, putting his glasses back on. “You didn't lie on it and bleed through your bandages...” He let the blanket drop and reached over to the bedside table, gently tilting the antiseptic towards himself. “And you had this on-hand.”

“I was a boy scout. 'Be prepared'.”

Roxas ignored him. “This is looking more and more like a murder case... Looks like you were into something bad, something you had to disappear to get out of...” His bright blue eyes went over the top of his glasses, looking at Axel's composedly stoic face.

“Any theories about my murderer, then?” he asked, and his tone was constructed to be flat, too.

“No suspects yet,” Roxas put the antiseptic back down. “Saix is suspicious, since he's been impossible to reach... But,” his words slowed as he thought, “this is looking more like you were in with a bad crowd for a while, pissed off someone dangerous, and tried to make a break for it. And this is what you got for it.”

“That sure is a theory,” Axel watched him, as Roxas opened the bedside table next and found a massive used bottle of lube.

Roxas paused. Lubrication wasn't exactly a surprising find in someone's bedroom, but the _size_ of it...

“Anything new to consider?” Axel's smirk was teasing, obviously thinking he'd been shocked quiet, but Roxas dismissed the opening to be taunted and went around the bed to inspect the other nightstand.

Lube wasn't shocking, but _maybe_ the cuffs and numerous types of gags were, a little. He went a tiny bit pink in the face.

In a falsely helpful sort of way, Axel suggested, “You might want to check under the bed, too.”

“I don't need you to tell me that,” Roxas quickly replied, getting on one knee to peer under the bed and starting to pull out the ropes and restraints to get a better look at them.

“Alright, I won't contribute,” Axel waved a hand, his offended expression obviously fabricated.

Roxas replaced a leather harness with the other restraints, still blushing a bit. “Alright, so you had a certain sexual lifestyle. I get it.”

“And what's that tell you, detective?” Axel drawled. “It must tell you _some_ thing.”

Roxas was quite for a second, and the comprehension was sudden. “Those bandages aren't-...”

“By George, I think he's got it.” With great relish, Axel watched Roxas's flush go from pink to red.

“What exactly did you _do?_ ” Roxas appeared to have forgotten himself, in the moment. He sounded horrified.

“Lay there and took it,” his eyebrows quirked.

“I,” Roxas cleared his throat, “see.”

He was getting back on his feet, glasses going back to his pocket. The temptation to mock him was nagging at Axel with a cruel glee, tempted to say that he didn't expect the older generation to understand how the younger one had reinvented sex... But, he was pretty sure Roxas was only in his thirties, in his max, and that was being generous.

Or, maybe he just looked _very_ good for his age.

“Any new theories about me?” he asked, instead.

“Nothing concrete,” Roxas had gone rather quiet.

“Ah, gonna gather more evidence before putting forth a hypothesis. The scientist in me respects that.”

As though prompted back into his investigation, Roxas began checking out the dresser, and found it emptied of clothing. “You weren't keeping your clothes here,” he observed, beginning to open each one. All the necessities were gone – no underwear, no socks. What few articles remained were badly wrinkled, probably just left at the bottom of the drawer to be worn less frequently than Axel's preferred dress.

“You had a change of clothes available, but you didn't dress here,” he gently shut the bottom drawer after he was done looking through them. “You definitely had someone you stayed with pretty often, maybe preferred to... Not surprising, considering you lived here alone...”

Axel made as though to lie down on the bed, and accidentally phased through it to the floor. “Fuck – ”

“Axel?” Roxas turned sharply.

“I'm good,” Axel stood up in the middle of the bed, sighing irritably. “Keep going.”

For a moment he was strangely tempted to laugh, circling the bed. He passed the metal waste bin but ignored it for the time being, instead indicating the laptop. “May I?”

“Huh?” Gingerly, Axel was kneeling on the bed with deliberate care, not sure how to control when he went through things. “Yeah, sure. Password protected, though.”

“I don't have to guess that, do I?” Roxas wouldn't have put it past him. He sat on the edge of the bed with a degree of uncertainty.

“Nah – it's 'flurry of flames', no spaces, capital f's, replace all the vowels with eights.”

“... What, really?” Roxas typed it in, hyper-conscious of the spelling.

“Been my password since first year college, they're really picky about what they'll let you use...”

“Huh.” Roxas needed to type it twice to replace all the vowels correctly, and was relieved when it displayed the start up screen.

The desktop was, not shockingly, a flame-patterned backdrop with a multitude of disorganized-looking folders. Roxas scanned the title of each one, finding them all labeled by class or type of assignment, except for one folder.

It was just titled 'Saix'.

Without thinking to ask, he double-clicked to open it. Axel opened his mouth to say something, but stopped, as the first of many pictures was opened in the default view program.

There were all pictures, transferred right off of his phone, of himself, in his bathroom. Roxas paused, staring at the shirtless selfie he'd taken – looking, specifically, at the state of his back, which was the focus of the picture. He'd needed to play with the angle, but got the entirety of his wounds in – deep, vicious-looking scratch marks that went all the way down past his tailbone, dark bruises and teeth marks peppering his shoulders. From the look of them, the wounds were days old.

Roxas scrolled to the next one.

Nearly a full, indecent view, but the subject of the picture were the horrible bleeding bite marks on Axel's thighs.

The next picture.

A wicked-looking bruise on his cheekbone.

Roxas kept scrolling through, and went through roughly seventy similar pictures. Axel's neck and chest were the most frequent focus, primarily bite marks that looked like they were in the healing process. He just kept clicking 'next', every photo jarringly casual, documented by Axel himself as though he'd liked the look of his eyeliner that day.

“Oh,” Roxas breathed quietly. “ _Oh._ ”

“Look,” Axel sounded vaguely uncomfortably. “It's _probably_ not what you think.”

“Saix did this,” Roxas interrupted, and while he meant to make it sound like a question, it didn't come out that way. “In the pictures, I mean.”

“Okay, that part is what you think.” If possible, Axel looked even more uneasy. Though it was no solace to him, Roxas felt at _least_ just as awkward.

“I didn't realize you were...”

“A masochist?” he supplied sardonically.

“No, I picked up on that one.”

“Oh, you mean you didn't realize I'm gay. Was gay,” Axel corrected, and then considered. “...Am gay.”

He was fairly sure being dead hadn't stopped dudes being attractive to him.

“... That destroys at least a few of my theories,” Roxas muttered. “Now I feel stupid.”

Of course a bottle of lube like that had made him _suspect_ , but he'd dismissed that as ignorance. Falsely, apparently.

“Hey, good on you for not stereotyping, though,” Axel praised him, covering relief. He couldn't even say for sure why he cared whether or not Roxas would've judged him on his sexuality; he was still dead, so what was the worst anyone could do or say about it?

“Yeah... Assuming gets you a lot of false leads on this job,” Roxas still seemed embarrassed.

“So,” Axel tried to steer them back on track. “Gay dead missing guy with a lot of questionable selfies. What do you make of it?”

“This Saix guy is making himself look worse all the time,” Roxas muttered, sounding surprisingly spiteful, and resumed clicking through pictures until he reached one that didn't fit.

It was a picture of a man with blue hair, getting into a car in what looked to be the middle of the night. The next picture was zoomed in, but blurrier; he was getting into the car with another man, leaning in, in a way that made it quite clear that he wasn't getting in to maintain a friendly amount of distance.

There were a few more similar pictures, obviously stealthily taken, of the blue-haired man getting questionably close to a fair-haired businessman. Some looked to be taken through a window, or at someone's workplace.

Roxas didn't have to make a great leap to guess that one of them was Saix, but glanced towards Axel, who was pointedly not looking at the monitor. “Can you identify these people for me?”

“That would be Saix,” Axel pointed out the blue-haired man, voice taking on that 'nothing' quality, “and his boss.”

“His boss?” Roxas repeated, eyebrows raised.

“Yup,” Axel dragged out the vowels flatly.

“And the camerawork is yours, am I right?”

“That's right.”

“They're not exactly maintaining a professional amount of distance, are they...” Roxas studied the picture on the screen.

“No, they really aren't,” Axel agreed tonelessly. “Don't. Might not be, even as we speak.”

“And you suspected this was happening...” Roxas began to nod.

“It was even more obvious if you knew Saix. Hypocrite,” he whispered the last word under his breath, but Roxas caught it and wasn't about to let that go.

“What makes you say that?”

Axel looked a little caught, but apparently didn't see the point in being belligerent about it. “He was just... He was always accusing me of looking at other guys,” he sighed. “Like he thought I'd sneak around.”

Phone notepad back out, Roxas began entering new notes. “Jealous, possessive boyfriend... Apparent sadist – er, is that the right word?”

“You're up on your BDSM terminology. Something you wanna tell me?” Axel was doing that _thing_ again, where he attempted to sound casual or joking, but he couldn't cover up something sort of hollow behind it all. Roxas glanced up at him, concern obvious in his eyes.

“It's not a term exclusive to that, uh, practice.”

“Hey, no judgment.”

Roxas only looked away from Axel's face so he could see what he was typing. “Involved in an affair with his employer...” Hastily, he backspaced. “ _Alleged_ affair...”

Axel was leaving the bed, bothered by the picture the longer it remained on the laptop screen, and Roxas thought to close it. He re-opened one of the self-taken pictures, however, trying to look at it with a more critical eye. “You describe yourself as a masochist,” he looked over to Axel. “These...injuries. Was this something you consented to?”

The hesitation was brief, but noticeable. “I-... Yeah...”

“You don't sound sure...”

“No, I mean, I did,” Axel backtracked, with a lot more certainty than before. Roxas didn't call him out on it.

“So, this amount of...” he struggled to find a word that wasn't offensive; he had a feeling 'abuse' wouldn't go over well. He'd just have to stick with his go-to... “...injury was typical, or expected?”

“Yeah – sort of...”

“Sort of?” Roxas repeated.

“This is coming out wrong,” Axel sounded frustrated. “That was just a thing that happened when we fucked, and we had a lot of sex so yes, I could expect to get roughed up. Just... There wasn't always an indication of how... How much damage he'd do.”

Slowly, Roxas nodded, gaze a little steely. “So you consented to being hurt during sex, but sometimes he would cause more damage than you were imagining when you gave your consent? Do I have that right?”

“That sounds bad,” he protested, but no denial came with it.

“It is bad,” Roxas gripped his phone a little harder, but relented. “Hey, I'm not going to pass judgment on anyone's sex life, whether it makes sense to me or not. The only thing I need to know if those instances ever made you feel like he'd violated your consent.”

Visibly, Axel seemed unsure of how to answer. Rather than draw conclusions from his balking, Roxas turned back to the computer screen. A bite mark, on Axel's hip... It was gory and deep enough to look worthy of a trip to the ER. What had Saix _done_ , tried to bite through to the bone...?

“That's just how he is,” Axel finally said. “I knew that.”

“You know how that sounds, don't you.”

“I'm not a victim,” was the immediate response.

“You're dead,” Roxas said bluntly.

It was as though Axel had forgotten. He almost flinched, glancing away. “...Well. Yeah. But...”

“When you weren't here, were you staying with Saix?” Roxas changed the subject. Axel looked defeated.

“... Yeah.”

“Even after you suspected him of cheating?”

“Yeah.”

“How many nights a week, approximately?” Roxas's middle finger tapped a few keys on his touch screen.

“... It varied?”

“Varied from?”

“Aren't you supposed to be detecting?” Axel tried to deflect. “This is falling into interview territory.”

“Interviews are part of detective work.”

With an exasperated huff, Axel's fight seemed to be coming back, but he still acquiesced to answer. “Couple of times a week on average, maybe? Always weekends.”

It was entered into Roxas's case document. “And the sadistic tendencies, dd they ever happen out of established boundaries? Or did he ever threaten to?”

“He kind of loses sight of things sometimes,” Axel mumbled vaguely. “I call it 'berserk mode'.”

“Berserk?” Roxas looked alarmed.

“Exaggeration for comedic effect,” he tried to verbally hand-wave it, but Roxas frowned deeply.

“Doesn't answer the question.”

Once again, Axel found himself stuck with something he didn't know quite how to answer. “He just has, uh – he snaps, sometimes.”

“And if he 'snaps', what does that look like?” Roxas's gaze was trained on him. Those eyes were actually really piercing, even more so with the reading glasses lowered on the bridge of his nose, looking literally right through him -

Axel was starting to really hate this.

“He drags me to the bedroom and we fuck until he's cooled down,” Axel shrugged one shoulder stiffly, turning away to try tapping on a wall.

“And you don't consider that outside of your consent?”

“I – no?” Axel rapped a finger against the surface. No sound. Not even contact.

“Never?”

“It's not like I can remember every single instance...” he trailed off.

“Did you feel threatened or unsafe around him, is what I'm getting at,” Roxas was tense, and wasn't sure he should be pushing it when Axel was already dead, but --

“That was part of the appeal!” Axel replied heatedly, and deflated within a second of snapping. Roxas fell silent, thinking it all over, finger hovering over his phone.

“... He didn't kill me, Roxas.”

He kind of didn't want to believe Axel.

“Look at what I'm seeing,” he said, instead. “Possessive partner, known to be violent towards you, probably cheating, has you at his place maybe half the week, and goes silent when you go missing. What reason do I have not to send the police to his door right now?”

“He doesn't even know I'm dead, yet,” Axel pinned his gaze to the wall.

“There's still plenty of cause to bring him in for questioning,” Roxas persisted. “And when you're found to be dead, more than enough evidence to make an arrest. Search of his place could convict him.”

“Cheating or not,” Axel turned back towards him, “he's still the only person who might _care_ that I'm dead.”

Roxas had been prepared to argue, silenced at that.

“On some level, yeah, maybe he deserves to go to prison – I'm not an idiot, I know Saix is a fucked-up individual and people in normal relationships probably _don't_ catalog their sex wounds, but... Fuck. It took work four missed shifts to call someone. Do you know how many days of class are between my work shifts? And _no one_ even noticed? My own _mother_ didn't know until someone else told her I wasn't showing up to work, and my dad-...”

Axel stopped, having begun to pace. Roxas looked on with increasing concern, neither interrupting nor prompting.

“...It's really too bad we didn't meet while I was alive. And single,” he changed the subject abruptly. “I can be charming when I'm not confronting my life.”

It took a second to register that as flirting. Roxas shook his head a bit. “You really aren't the person I thought you were...”

“Well, yeah, you thought I was alive,” Axel snorted, as though that had been what Roxas was referring to.

“One of my many false theories, yes,” he agreed. Roxas was unaware of when he'd stopped doubting the reality of a ghost, and just as oblivious to the fact that he wasn't calling it into question in his head, anymore.

“What person did you think I was?” He appeared morbidly curious.

“You heard most of my theories, I think.”

“And what do you think now?”

“I'd probably still be wrong if I told you,” Roxas confessed, “but I'm sorry you died. And I'm sorry we couldn't have met when you were alive.”

What almost came out of Axel's mouth was 'sorry', but what he managed to say was, “... Thanks.”

“... I don't know if I could have prevented it if I'd been called to investigate you sooner,” Roxas looked like pondering on it too much might age him prematurely. “Not much point in thinking about it. It's always great when I track down a missing person before the worst can happen, but that's rare...”

Axel was avoiding looking right at him.

“I thought you might be one of those when I took the case. Not in a heroic way,” Roxas sighed. “To be honest, I got the sense you were a grown-up runaway trying to defy your parents. Your mother made it sound like you've done it before.”

He snorted. “When I was a kid, yeah. She never really stopped seeing me as a punk teenager.”

“Parents don't,” Roxas replied simply.

“No matter what you do, apparently...”

“I've learned not to put as much faith in parental accounts. In this case, though, that was all I had to go on.”

“ _Just_ my mom's account, though, I'm guessing,” Axel processed all of this, looking more tired than a ghost should.

“She was the only one I spoke to, yes.” He wasn't sure if he was being blamed for something, with the way Axel said that.

“'Course,” Axel didn't make it any clearer. “You gonna keep looking for shit, or are you done?”

“No choice,” Roxas heaved himself back up. “You say Saix didn't kill you, but if I can't find proof of his innocence, I have to pursue him as the lead suspect.”

Axel was quiet as he debated with himself whether or not he _wanted_ to try to clear Saix's name. He continued to mull it over as Roxas did more of a check through his laptop, guiding him to his email to let the private detective take a look at a long list of unread emails from angry classmates.

“Bet _they're_ wondering where you are,” Roxas attempted to point out.

“They're wondering about their grades.”

“You've got some invitations, as well,” Roxas clicked to display social media notifications, and Axel returned to the bed with vague surprise.

“Yeah?” he scanned the invite he'd been sent, and then grinned. “Demyx. Co-worker. Saix was so convinced we were flirting.”

“You were friends, then?”

“More like we could've been friends,” Axel's legs sank through the bed again, walking away from it. “Never quite got that far.”

“Friendly enough that he invites you to parties.”

“That's kind of just Demyx.”

“Still thought of you,” Roxas was close to giving up on this endeavor, but at least wanted to get in the last word. His attempts to cheer Axel hadn't been subtle enough to go without comment, though.

“There's really not much point in pep-talking me,” Axel grinned. “Even though it is adorable to watch you try.”

“... It's my job to make observations,” he denied.

“Just, don't worry about making me feel better or anything, alright?” Axel began to pace idly again. “I won't go all poltergeist on you.”

Roxas snorted. “Just a shame if being dead is as depressing as being alive.”

“Hey, view from the afterlife's not bad.”

It took a second, again. Roxas raised an eyebrow.

“I didn't get to flirt for _years_ ,” Axel smirked. “There's _some_ freedom in death.”

He got a faint grin in return before Roxas's continued scouring of his inbox proved fruitful; an email from Sephiroth Jenova. He read it carefully, though the business-like tone of the email made it a little stilted.

It was primarily about the Shin-Ra internship, but the more relevant information within was slipped between lines. A note about his grades needing to be higher if anything was to be made of Axel's future... And a veiled threat to stop sending money, if that didn't happen.

Roxas read it twice, and was starting to read it a third time when Axel made a light bulb on his nightstand explode.

“ _Holy shit!”_ Axel leaped back, even though the glass couldn't touch him, and Roxas nearly clutched his heart in shock.

“Is that _really_ necessary?” he demanded.

“Sorry, fuck,” Axel was shaking off his own jolt. “I was trying to touch it.”

Roxas caught his breath. “It's like you're trying to kill me for someone to hang out with...”

“We could start a little ghost family,” he quipped, but then sobered. “Lesson learned?”

“Good,” Roxas exhaled heavily, lungs protesting their intake of air.

“Wonder if it's just light bulbs that explode,” Axel mused, but thankfully, did not experiment. “Find anything else interesting?”

“Email from your dad,” Roxas confirmed. “Does he hold money over your head like that often?”

Somehow, it seemed the only part of that that Axel heard was - “My dad emailed?” He came over to start reading it, eyes running through sentences fast. Pointlessly, Roxas tried to move aside to let him see.

Axel's expression turned neutral. He was vaguely disappointed, and not even sure why. “Standard fare,” he dismissed.

“You get these kind of, uh, nudges a lot?” Roxas tried to ask again.

“Whenever I hear from him, which...isn't a whole lot.”

Roxas nodded. “I'm interested in your father...”

“Well, he and my mom are divorced, so you might have a shot. I think he's straight, though. Sorry.”

Roxas pretended not to hear him. “And your relationship with him.”

“We didn't have one.” Axel seemed tempted to make another joke out of it, but stopped himself, watching Roxas make a note of his response on his phone. He checked for the last few times Sephiroth emailed his son, finding the messages to be infrequent and few, before moving on to his Internet search history.

“Dude, I could have porn there or something,” Axel tutted. “That's really personal.”

“Porn is the least of my worries,” Roxas began scanning through, paying particular attention to any of Axel's searches.

'Xemnas Shidousha' – that one perplexed him, and he immediately opened it.

Axel's past search had gleaned the same results that he found when he clicked; the man in charge of K.H Enterprises, the same one in the pictures with Saix.

“Ah,” he was hit with a wave of apprehension. “This is the boss. You're connected to some important people...”

“I was the lucky sperm of an important person, and I'm dating someone who's fucking an important person. I think the differences are subtle but distinct.”

“You made this search about three months ago... So, not a very recent development.” And Axel had stayed with him anyway, which Roxas found all the more worrisome.

“That was when I started thinking something was up, but... I wasn't sure they were actually having an affair until about a month after that.”

Still a long while, Roxas's mind whispered, and clicked on another extremely pertinent search.

“Which was also around the time you were looking for information about domestic abuse.”

“There's no way to make that look good, is there?”

“If you want to make it 'look good', I'm even more worried.”

Axel just sighed.

“And I don't think you were looking up your father to write a research paper on him,” Roxas indicated multiple searches for 'Sephiroth Jenova', typically followed by the title of a news publication. After a few clicks to see the articles in question, Roxas found himself surprised again; he'd thought Axel would have been digging for scandalous information. “It looks like you were just keeping tabs on him...”

“Like I said, I never heard from him much,” Axel shrugged, but belying his casualness, he'd looked uncomfortable for the entirety of the conversation. “Can probably count the number of times I've seen him in person on one hand.”

Roxas must have looked skeptical, because Axel's response was to lift up a hand and start ticking off his fingers.

“First day of school, first time I went to holding, high school graduation, and once two years ago when I finished my first degree so he could tell me what to do with my life and snap a quick photo-op.”

That appeared to be the end of the list.

“... Did you ask to see him more?” Roxas bit his lip briefly.

“When I was a kid, but I learned to give up on that quick.”

“... Ah.” He supposed, a man like Sephiroth... He was extremely high-profile, always busy. Roxas guessed that it made sense, that he wouldn't have much time for his son.

That he would bother _having_ a son, or that he wouldn't _make_ time, though...

“Whatever,” Axel tried to sound like it didn't bother him. “He's a busy guy.”

Roxas just nodded, and closed the browser, preparing to move on.

“Give me a character profile,” Axel wheedled as he shut the laptop. “Just based on what you know.”

To his pleasure, Roxas opened his mouth as though about to answer, but the anticipation was promptly crushed as he spotted the metal trashcan and its blackened contents. Someone had burned something – a lot of somethings – and Roxas knelt by it to examine the ashes.

“Nothing?” Axel deflated. “Come on, I get so few thrills now.”

“You burned something,” Roxas observed vaguely, weighing the pros and cons of trying to rifle through the charred paper. “Question is, what did you want to get rid of...”

“Oh, yeah,” Axel laughed. “Flyers.”

“Of what?” Roxas persisted, certain that couldn't be all it was. Carefully, he picked at the papers, picking up a badly singed corner and trying to read it.

“Whatever was in the mail and wasn't useful. I like to burn shit, it's a stress reliever.”

“Ah,” Roxas lowered the scrap of burned paper, confirming that Axel was telling the truth without any surprise.

“Sorry, that's probably more of a false lead.”

He shook his head. “That tells me plenty, actually.”

“Yeah?”

“You might not cut, Axel, but you've got all the qualities of someone who self-harms,” Roxas told him frankly, dusting off his gloves.

“... Go figure,” he muttered.

“So,” Roxas sat back on the floor, and began to run down his profile of Axel. “Twenty-six year old only child of a major corporate figure. Estranged from his father, plenty of expectations placed on you, expenses paid conditionally on meeting those expectations. Distanced from social contact except with an arguably abusive partner, and escapes stress with destructive behavior and masochism.”

For all Axel's bluster and demands about hearing himself profiled, it was unnerving to just...hear himself broken down into facts.

“... Can I ask you something?”

Axel stared at nothing in particular, but snapped out of it after a second, overwhelmed by a sense of dread. “Yeah?”

“How long have you been dead?” Roxas inquired. “It can't have been from the time you went missing, if Saix expected to see you several days a week, and you're telling the truth about him not knowing yet...”

“He _might_ not know,” Axel admitted. “Might suspect, given the circumstances. ...Two days.”

Roxas cursed under his breath, tilting his head back against the bed and closing his eyes. If he'd been called three days ago...

No, he said he wouldn't think about it. Nothing good came of 'what if's or 'if only's.

At least that solved one mystery.

“He knew where you were the whole time, didn't he?”

“... Yeah.”

“Only other explanation for his silence,” he murmured, getting the answer he expected. “Either he has something to hide, or he wasn't looking for you, or both.”

He was starting to turn over implications in his head, eyes opening again to watch Axel sink down and 'sit' on the bed again.

“... He wouldn't let me leave.”

The words were like a bath of ice.

Roxas absorbed this, sitting up straighter. Axel was impassive, looking right back down at him until maintaining eye contact became too strange for him.

“He trapped you?”

Pointedly, Axel was avoiding his gaze now, as casual as he could muster. “He actually managed to lock me in... Took my phone, because he was positive he'd find proof that I was cheating, if he held onto it. Initially, I almost didn't mind. Felt kind of like a vacation.”

“... That didn't last,” Roxas surmised softly, insides twisting.

“Started going kind of stir-crazy. I was stressing about school... Didn't have anything to do all day while he was at work... I was cut off from anyone but him.” Axel sounded like he could have been reporting about the weather, but it had the accidental opposite effect he was going for. Every word felt wrong. “I started burning stuff, just to vent, but he'd get so pissed off about it... He never liked that habit.”

Roxas's nails were slowly starting to dig into his palms.

“So I busted a window while he was at work and abandoned ship,” Axel went on lightly, and Roxas got a sinking feeling that he knew where this story was going.

Or maybe he'd known for a while.

“There, uh. Wasn't really anywhere to go,” Axel stared across at his closet. “Couldn't come back home – he has a key, anyway, used it to pick up more of my clothes... My parents were never an option, and if they found out I'm gay, I could kiss the house goodbye. There was really only one obvious out.”

Roxas swallowed. His throat was a little tight. He thought, though, that he should have been more surprised. It felt disrespectful, not to be surprised.

But he'd had a feeling. He didn't like to assume, but. He _had_ had a feeling.

His voice was even gentler as he asked, “How did you do it?”

“You know where the highway cuts over the bridge?” Axel made a motion with his hands, like he was trying to draw a picture of the overpass in the air. “Turns out you can walk there if you're careful. And that everyone's driving too fast to really notice if you jump.”

Roxas was silent for some time. Axel wished he still had a functioning heart, because the phantom sensation of it beating all the way up in his throat was all the worse for it's lack of reality.

“So,” he prompted when he couldn't take the quiet anymore, and deigned to gaze down at him. “What do you think now?”

“Son of a _bitch_ ,” Roxas breathed, almost inaudibly, before looking back at Axel. “I think Saix is still a murderer, but I'll have a hell of a time proving it.”

“Wasn't just his fault.”

“He may not have pushed you physically, but he _did_ push you.”

“Technically, I leapt.”

Roxas couldn't let him make light of it. He broke his gaze, pressing his fingers to his eyes again like he was about to rub them, but he didn't. He just applied hard pressure there, and Axel felt as though he'd hurt him directly.

“... If you want to just call the police, put this over to them now... My body's bound to wash up somewhere soon,” Axel suggested uneasily. “It's not crazy for you to have found it and to just tell my mom it looks like I ran away.”

“I've got to find your body,” he slowly drew his hand away. “Otherwise it's out of my hands, and everything I know means nothing.”

“Wish I could help on that front,” Axel murmured, and meant it. “I can't leave the house. Forever...probably...”

“Ghosts aren't my specialty... But you know they'll sell this place once it's all over. Other people will live here...”

“And I can try my hand at haunting?”

A shadow of a smile swept over Roxas's tired face. He started to get up, placing a hand on the disheveled blankets for support. Axel thought that the covers might slip and send him right back down, but he kept steady without any sign of effort.

“I wonder why this place, though,” Roxas muttered. “If you died in the river, why show up here? Doesn't seem like it was really 'home' to you...”

“Little late to cry 'believer', but maybe this is hell,” Axel sounded thoughtful. “Went from being trapped in Saix's apartment to trapped here.”

Roxas winced, “I always thought going to hell for killing yourself was bullshit.”

“Or I could get fatalistic and say I'm here to help _you_ ,” he suggested.

“If you were here to help me solve this, your work is done.” For a moment, he feared that was true; if that was the case, Axel would vanish.

He...didn't really want that, selfish or not.

“This is when I dissolve into light or grow my wings, right?” Axel tilted his head, like he was checking his back for them.

“Who knows,” Roxas shrugged, and went from standing upright to sinking onto the bed, lying back.

He couldn't recall ever being so exhausted in his life.

Axel stared at him, reaching one arm over – not through, Roxas was thankful – and leaned over to look Roxas in the eye. “If this _is_ hell, it's off to a surprisingly good start. I'm glad someone knows. Even if you're technically a total stranger being paid to be here.”

“I think we're a little past _total_ strangers, now,” Roxas argued, staring up at his face. He could still see the stucco ceiling, but if he let himself just focus on Axel's face... He let the sharpness of his jaw draw his gaze, the green of his eyes, the faint marks of tattoos on his cheeks.

He sort of wished he could touch him.

“Well, you do know more about me than literally anyone,” Axel conceded with a smirk.

“Funny how that happens...” Roxas closed his eyes briefly. Then, it just casually leapt out of his mouth, “You know, jumping was how I always figured I'd do it...”

“It kind of sucked,” Axel informed him, watching his eyelids twitch and lashes flicker ever-so-slightly. “Busted my head but not bad enough to just kill me. I had to drown with a concussion, and that's exactly as unpleasant as it sounds.”

He knew better than to say what was in his head, yet he couldn't seem to stop it from spilling out anyway.

“If I'd stayed alive for just a few more days, maybe I could have met you for real.”

Roxas cringed. “... Maybe. My next step was going to be to track down Saix. But things would have been different. I wouldn't have known what I do now, probably wouldn't have tried for a warrant. And if I showed up at his door asking about you, who knows what would have happened...”

“Good point.” Axel almost commented that Roxas may have ended up as the ghost, instead, but stopped. If it was a joke, it wasn't funny... And he wasn't sure if it even would have been in jest.

Either way, he didn't wish that on him.

“Hey – never kill yourself. Okay?”

“... This is the only time I'll get a testimonial, I guess,” Roxas murmured, and Axel couldn't tell what that was supposed to mean.

“Just, I dunno if this _is_ hell, but you're an attractive young detective with a talent for talking to stubborn dead guys.” His voice lowered. “I don't know if you still feel like dying, but. I think it'd be a shame.”

Roxas mulled over his words, mouth on auto-pilot after a beat of heavy stillness. “Wouldn't go the bridge route. Always figured it'd be too low, and I guess you found out first-hand.” The way he spoke, it was like he was recalling a fond memory, “I had it all planned. You know that huge clock tower in the center of town? That was gonna be it.”

Axel just listened.

“In high school, me and some friends used to sneak up to the top ledge all the time and just hang out. Eat, talk, sleep, whatever we felt like.” Roxas closed his eyes again, picturing it. “I used to fantasize about falling off the edge. Jumping isn't my style – too purposeful, you know? Thought I'd face the clock and just rock back and forth on the edge until I tipped backwards. That way it wouldn't be up to me when it happened, and I'd fall looking up at the sky...”

Privately, Axel found himself wishing he'd done something like that.

“But I couldn't make my friends watch, so I had to go up on my own. There are a lot of stairs in that tower,” Roxas's lips twitched, that ghost of a sad smile back on his face. “It's a long walk up, and it gives you way too much time to think...”

“What made you change your mind?” Axel was almost reluctant to ask, fearing another regret atop his amassing pile of them.

“Don't know,” Roxas shook his head slightly. “I think I wussed out mostly, made a bunch of excuses. One day it was too cold, one day the sun had already set. I can't remember them all.”

Axel nodded slightly, the look in his transparent eyes distant, and Roxas laughed softly. “I made that climb twelve times before I left for college, and never even reached the top.”

“... Do you ever wish you'd done it?”

“Hard to say...” Roxas glanced away from him, honestly thinking it over. “I decided thirteen would be an appropriate number to get it right on. Planned to do it on my summer break after first year, but when I got there, it was all blocked off – under renovations. Can you believe that?” He almost laughed, again, but shook it off. “Anyway, I don't put much stock in 'signs', but that just had to be one. Dying was just never going to work out for me, and it was too hard to keep trying. Especially after it messed up my order. Like, who goes on the fourteenth try?”

Axel snorted in dark amusement.

“I don't see the point in wishing I'd done it because I'm sure it wouldn't have worked. With my luck, I'd trip and pass out of the top step, or something would have miraculously broken my fall,” he sighed. “Anyway, the whole afterlife thing kind of ruins the appeal now.”

“Maybe there isn't one and I'm just an exception,” Axel offered, and wasn't sure if he was trying to comfort him or not. “Either way... I'm glad you've alive.”

“Thanks,” Roxas found Axel's eyes with his own, again. “Wish I could say the same.”

There was an obvious movement of Axel's gaze, looking from his eyes to his mouth, and for a second they both thought he was about to try to lean down to connect their lips. Axel remembered what was wrong with that before he moved, and no one had to point it out aloud.

“So, what are you gonna tell my mom?” he asked, trying to steer them away from the idea of Roxas's death. It was more depressing to think about than even his own, in Axel's estimation.

“Well, once I find the motivation to stand again, I'm going to have to go search the riverbanks. There's enough here to indicate a suicide, and if I suspected that, I'd search all the likely spots. The cops will probably get to her before I will.”

“Good, you really shouldn't have to be the one to tell her,” Axel declared.

“I'm used to it.”

“That... Well, that sucks.”

“I still want to put Saix behind bars, but suicides are open-and-shut, as far as police are concerned,” Roxas was visibly displeased by that, all the more weary. “There isn't necessarily enough evidence here to implicate him. I'd have to have made some pretty staggering leaps in conclusion to account for all the blanks you filled in.”

Inspiration hit like a truck. “... I could write a suicide note.”

Roxas raised an eyebrow. “Will it be on the walls in blood?”

“I was thinking I could dictate and you could type.”

“Oh,” Roxas blinked. “Right.”

He just so happened to straddle the generational gap in such a way that technology wasn't always his first instinct. He hadn't even owned a laptop until his first year of college.

“I don't know if that'd hold up in court, but it might be worth something,” Axel drew back.

“It might, or it might not,” Roxas mused, “but it couldn't be ignored, either.”

“Question, though,” Axel balked. “Do you want to put Saix behind bars for my sake, or for yours? You aren't thinking about 'if you could have saved me', right?”

“... Neither,” Roxas determined. “Locking him up won't change things for you, and it won't actually help me sleep any better at night.”

“Then let's not bother,” Axel attempted to sound dismissive again. “It'll just be more trouble for you.”

“He's still guilty, Axel. I have to follow through on that,” Roxas looked resolute.

“The righteousness thing is sexy, on you.”

“You have a very strange method of flirting,” he observed.

“That was my way, even in life,” Axel rose from the bed. “I want that on my tombstone.”

Roxas was unable to resist a laugh, some of the tension from before breaking. “I'll see what I can do.”

“You're a good man.”

The chuckles were short-lived, Roxas sobering again quickly and regarding Axel with that steely glint again. “If I can prevent this from happening to someone else, I have to do it.”

Axel thought of Xemnas, and severely doubted that Saix was even capable of abusing him in any way. But then...

It wasn't _only_ about Saix, he realized, and even if it was. If there was even a chance.

He wasn't sure _how_ he felt about this, but Roxas was right in that he wouldn't be dead if not for...factors. And Saix was a factor.

“I know what you mean,” he said heavily. “I'll do whatever helps.”

“I wonder if you can – ” Roxas paused. “Nah, that's stupid.”

“I'm a ghost. Plausibility is a myth. Nothing is stupid.”

That reasoning couldn't be faulted, and so Roxas went on. “Well, some of the other ghost cliches worked,” he reddened a tiny bit more with every word. “I wonder if you could, like, possess my hand so I could mimic your handwriting.”

Axel hummed, intrigued. “You think? Might be worth a shot...”

“Worst that could happen –” The blush disappeared as Roxas blanched, “Actually, let's not think about that.”

Roxas had to stretch to get some of the stiffness out of his back as he stood up, and they had to make their way downstairs to find paper and a pen, Axel's 'lucky lighter' atop blank usable pages. They relocated the necessary school supplies to the kitchen table, pulling up a chair. Roxas replaced his gloves once more and sat down with Axel directly behind him, so close that he could feel the buzz of unnatural cold like it was pressed to his back, while visions of the exploding light bulb danced through Axel's paranoid head.

“... Fuck, are you sure about this?” Axel questioned when Roxas uncapped the pen and dared to look back, as though spurring him on. “I could explode your hand.”

“You could, or we could end up permanently merged and I'll have to explain why I'm stuck in your house,” Roxas said, the exact opposite of helpful. “I think the most likely case is that you'll go right through me and we'll have to go back to the typing idea, which won't have as much standing in court.”

Slowly, Axel skimmed his hand right through Roxas's, and the living of the two had to fight not to shiver.

“I've got to really concentrate to make any kind of contact,” Axel murmured.

“I won't talk, then.”

“If anything _does_ happen, I'm sorry.” Axel's face screwed up in concentration, eyes narrow, regarding their hands.

“I'll see if I can claim it as a workplace injury,” Roxas replied smartly, and then dutifully fell silent. There were a few nerve-wracked snickers from Axel, but his concentration was back in no time.

Roxas's was not, having nothing to compare the sensation he was experiencing to other than the phenomenon of rare, unexplained chills that he'd normally shake off in the fraction of a second. Every hair was standing on end, muscles in his hand feeling like they were independently twitching.

He had to close his eyes, and tried to think of something else.

Then his fingers curled, completely separate from conscious movement, and the feeling was so bizarre that he yelped. Axel's focus was lost, hand slipping through, but he wasn't exactly put out.

“Holy shit,” he breathed with a grin. “Think I almost had it.”

“Oh god, that was the weirdest feeling...” Roxas didn't share Axel's jubilation.

“Cool,” Axel laughed.

“If this works, we're saving it for emergencies only,” Roxas insisted, feeling faint.

“Does it hurt?”

“No,” he verified. “I dunno how to explain...”

“...Want to try again?” Axel needed to double-check, and got an affirmative from him. Roxas's eyes closed again – tighter, anticipating – and Axel tried to pour all of his concentration just into his hand.

He was sitting there for what felt, to Roxas, like an hour before his hand had completely wrapped around the pen in his hand, without Roxas ever having so much as willfully bent a finger.

“Eugh,” he bit the inside of his cheek, managing not to start so badly this time. The movement of his hand was sluggish and clumsy compared to what it should be, and he opened his eyes to watch it flex experimentally.

He wished he hadn't. It was like watching someone else wearing his skin as a glove.

“Please tell me this is just as unnerving for you,” Roxas stared, sickeningly unable to look away.

Axel sounded just a touch hysterical. “This could take 'the Stranger' to a whole new freaky level.”

“At the risk of being an insensitive ass, could we try to do this quick?” The coldness at his back, the intensely _strange_ feeling in his hand, the disconnect between the movements and his brain...

“Sorry, just...getting a feel for it,” Axel had them pick up the pen again, and began to write, while Roxas avoided watching him do so – in part to give him some sense of privacy, but also because the sight of his hand moving without his control was making him feel faintly ill.

Roxas waited until Axel seemed to be done to writing before saying, “I know what this feels like, now.”

“Hn...?” He was just finishing adding a shaky version of his signature.

“My hand feels exactly like it did the time in college I blacked out with my arm under my back.” The violently numb sensation felt like it was cut off at the elbow, but when Axel's hand slipped out from within his body, all he felt was pins and needles.

“Whoa,” Axel shook his own hand out, but it was more for effect – he couldn't truthfully feel any sort of sensation at all, anymore.

“That looks like your handwriting?” Roxas tried to rub the feeling back into his forearm, studying the disjointed lettering and trying not to focus on the contents themselves, but it was like words were jumping out for his attention.

'I have nowhere safe to go.

Mom, Dad: you never would have understood. I never had a home with you. This place wasn't any safer than I would have been with either of you, especially once you found out what I'm so afraid of.

Saix is dangerous and I can't take it anymore. I'm not safe around him. I don't know how or why I denied it for so long.

I'm going to die, and my blood's going to be either on his hands or all over his teeth.

It sucks that no one could have helped me.

Axel Jenova'

He wondered how much of that was for the benefit of the court, and how much had been going through Axel's head when-...

“If I were drunk, maybe... Or really upset. Maybe I was shaking with fear.”

“It should pass,” Roxas sounded subdued. He was flailing his hand vigorously, trying to shake off the prickling sensation.

“You okay?” Axel watched, feeling kind of worried that he'd just massively overstepped some kind of boundary, even if it had been Roxas's idea.

“I'm not sure 'okay' is the right word, but I'm not the one who just wrote my own belated suicide note,” Roxas got up from the table, flexing his hand a few times as he crossed to open a drawer. He stared into it for a second, not finding what he was looking for. “Er, if there were Ziplock bags, where would I find them?”

“Cupboard over the fridge. You might have trouble reaching.”

“I'll struggle through,” he rolled his eyes and went over to the fridge, reaching up to pull the cupboard open. To his chagrin, he was barely able to see what was inside, and he had to feel around for the cardboard rectangle, pushing at it with his fingertips until it was within proper reach. “Only the worst kind of people build these cupboards...”

Completely unabashedly, Axel laughed at him. Somehow, Roxas resisted calling him a bastard.

He'd earned a bit of a break.

“Got it?”

“Almost – ” Roxas pulled the box down, letting out a breath. “This is the one reason I regret working privately... Have to provide everything for myself.”

“On the plus side, no uncomfortable romantic tension with your investigative partner,” Axel supplied a 'pro' to counter it.

“Oh, yeah, I often have that problem with men thirty years older than me,” Roxas snorted, getting out a plastic bag and shaking it to let air in.

“Silver foxes, right?”

“You've uncovered my weakness.”

“Which means we're never to be,” Axel sighed. “Tragic.”

“We're like Romeo and Juliet,” Roxas approached the table again. “Only absolutely nothing like Romeo and Juliet.”

“We're a _little_ like Romeo and Juliet.”

“There's _one_ resemblance.” Roxas carefully slid the note into the bag and sealed it again, smoothing out the air.

“Is it the death? It's the death,” Axel answered himself.

“But you're really more of an Ophelia, in that case...”

“I think I was a bit more sane,” he frowned as though wounded by the implication.

Roxas snapped a picture of the suicide note, and got out an envelope from within his jacket, marked 'A. Jenova'. “Depends how you want to interpret her last few scenes.”

Axel's mind had already gone elsewhere. “Hey, it _was_ the dead thing, right, and not the undeniable attraction?”

With a smirk, Roxas returned the envelope to his jacket – now containing the letter – and the kitchen chair to its proper position.

“That's a really ambiguous smile. Also, a little smug. I like it.”

“... I'd better go to the police with this,” Roxas patted his jacket lightly, rather than respond to the coquetry. “Get more hands and eyes on the search.”

“Right,” Axel sobered. “So...”

There was a second of silence, that stretched on for longer.

“I'll...probably be back with the team doing the investigation,” Roxas sounded somewhat uncomfortable, and was shifting his weight as though trying to prompt himself into either staying or going. He didn't know which one he actually wanted to do, now that it came to it.

“If you see me, you probably shouldn't talk to me out loud. You'll look crazy. Hey, unless they wind up seeing me too.”

“Yeah,” Roxas agreed. “If you can talk to me, though, and no one else ends up seeing you... Go for it. I imagine it'll get tough...”

Axel watched him rock back and forth indecisively. “...Hey, this was good. Don't worry 'bout me.”

“Just hate to think of you trapped here alone...” Roxas admitted. “I'd come by on my own, but I've got to give the key back to your mother...”

“Seems kind of a waste to hang around here when you don't have to, anyway,” Axel shrugged and forced a grin. “Go live, why don't you.”

“Don't get inspirational on me,” Roxas shot that down with a look that seemed kind of stern, for the situation. “I'd be working or watching TV at home, anyway. Could do both here... At least until your cable's cut and the house is sold...”

“Yeah, well,” Axel trailed off, honestly wishing he _could_ just stay.

Even the two days before, all alone, with nothing to occupy his brain but pounding at the walls like he could break them and screaming at the world that put him here...

“I'll do some research, if I can,” Roxas offered, searching his expression. “Don't know where I'll look, but I'll try to find out if this is really...permanent.”

“You're a good guy,” Axel echoed his earlier sentiment, with a great deal more sincerity. “Don't get hung up on this, alright? If you can't find anything, this was enough.”

“Nah, you know too much about me,” he tried to tease. “I have to come after you for that.”

It was weak, and they were both sure that the other knew full well that the idea of Roxas leaving and Axel being caged here, alone, left a bitter taste in both mouths. One slightly more literal than the other. Still, Axel laughed.

“... I'll see you around?” He really wasn't sure how one bade farewell to someone he would probably see again, but couldn't know for sure whether or not he'd even be visible to Roxas the next time.

“Yeah. And... I may or may not see you, I guess? That's the only time I'll ever be able to say that in a literal sense...”

“Either way, I get the better deal. You are _very_ pretty,” Axel remarked, and Roxas reddened.

“I hope the compliments are free.”

“Honesty always is,” his wink was theatrical.

Still, Roxas was having a hard time leaving. The pair of them continued to dither, uncertain how to say goodbye to one another and exchanging increasingly awkward farewells until Axel glided back out of the kitchen, and Roxas was locking the kitchen door behind him.

The click it made was damning, and the sun seemed too bright. The light was startling – Roxas forgot it would still be daytime outside. He took a few steps backwards and pocketed the key, looking up at the open bedroom window.

It all felt...less real, without Axel right in front of him, but somehow more sad.

“If I wake up after all this, my therapist is going to have a field day,” Roxas murmured to himself, slowly turning away to walk around the side of the house and go back to his car. “'Tell me how the ghost helped you solve the case, Roxas'... 'Tell me how the ghost got you to open up about yourself, Roxas'... 'The ghost is your guilt, Roxas,'... 'And Saix is actually your responsibilities'... 'Why do you think the ghost hit on you, Roxas'...”

Axel lurked near the living room window, watching Roxas make his way glumly down the street, and pressed his hand to the barrier he couldn't see.

If he pressed hard enough, he almost thought he could feel it _give_ , just a little.

He watched a car come down the street and turn onto the main road, and he stopped trying to break through.

 

* * *

  


When Roxas did return to the house, it was with an unopened bottle of bourbon instead of a coffee, and the sun was beginning to set rather than high up in the morning sky. It was also through the front door, which he managed to jam into the lock after a few tries with a shaky hand, and it was only several hours later that same day.

The house hadn't visibly changed, since he'd gone. But he _felt_ different.

He felt haunted.

Axel would like that, Roxas thought wildly. He seemed to get a kick out of ghost humor.

Searching for the light switch, he shut the door behind him and called out, “Axel?”

Roxas immediately went quiet, and listened as hard as he could. There, Axel's voice – was it? He thought... That _may_ have been a sound, but already he wasn't sure whether or not he'd actually heard him, or if he imagined something.

Maybe he'd made the entire encounter up.

Except he couldn't have, because there was no way he could have known... Any of it. Any of the things he'd now proven true.

“Are you here...?” Roxas flicked the light on, looking around. To his relief, there was a voice; it was too indistinct to make sense of, but it was a relief all the same. He lifted his head as he tried to identify the location of it.

“Axel...?” he tried again, and reached out a hand.

“Right here... How did this work the first time?”

The words were making sense, and the source was right before him. That, Roxas didn't determine by listening – he felt the now-identifiable sensation of his hand passing through a ghost, and he retracted it quickly.

“Ugh – you are there,” he'd meshed relief with hysteria. “Can you just...be visible?”

“I'm working on it,” Axel was a little alarmed, he could tell by the sound of him. Regardless of tone, just his voice alone was a comfort...

But he needed to see him, he needed to get the _image_ out of his mind. “Fuck, I'm... I have to sit.” Roxas went around the space he presumed was where Axel stood, going to drop onto the couch.

“You look freaked...” The words were more audible by the moment. That was good.

“I wish I could see you...” Roxas clutched his brown paper package and stared at the empty space. Axel surveyed him, only roughly near Roxas's eye-line, and worried over his paled face.

“... Did you find it?” he guessed.

“Your body?” Roxas removed the bottle of liquor, letting the paper bag drop. “Yeah, we found it.”

Axel eyed the bourbon, sinking onto the couch beside him. “You okay?”

“I will be,” he popped the bottle open. “After this.”

“Pour one out for me. Into your mouth, because I hate wasting expensive alcohol.”

“I can do that for you,” he replied heavily, and tipped the bottle back, drinking until he couldn't stand the burn anymore. Roxas leaned forward with a short gasp, looking at the coffee table in lieu of anything else to focus on.

“Was it bad...?” Axel felt like he should apologize.

Roxas cleared his throat, the alcoholic burn enough to brace him momentarily. “Your story of what happened was accurate... Did not prepare me for what that would _look_ like, though.”

Yeah. He definitely had to apologize. Axel cringed as he tried to picture his own corpse, but his mind seemed to reject even the idea, finding it too repulsive. “Sorry you had to see that.”

The barely-recognizable mash of features had been enough to try and stomach, but what they'd found would have looked a lot more human before it had been waterlogged for over forty-eight hours.

The one 'upside' he had to force himself to consider was that the autopsy would confirm the time of death, roughly, weeks after Axel had gone missing. That would be as damning for Saix as the note.

“That's part of my job,” Roxas shook his head, idly picking up the silver lighter from the coffee table and turning it over repeatedly in his hand. “I've seen bodies in worse states, believe me, but it's not the same... Normally, I haven't been just talking to the person who's been dead for two days.”

He kept fondling the lighter in a self-soothing manner, taking another drink. Axel watched him, finding both motions familiar – he used to do something similar, but it didn't feel like the time to point that out.

Although, if Roxas was still having trouble calming down, _then_ he would suggest the next logical step, which was to burn things.

“So, here's the plan. I'm going to drink this,” Roxas raised the bottle, “and hopefully at some point I'll be able to see you, or just won't care anymore. And we're gonna talk about fucking anything else but this.”

“I'm trying to get visible. Can you see me now?”

Roxas looked towards his voice, right beside him. “Not yet...”

“Fuck. So, uh. We did a lot of talking about me...”

“Yeah, that was kind of the point...”

“So let's talk about you,” Axel barreled on. “How long have you been a detective?”

Roxas drank again, a long, slow pull, but then lowered it and answered with a slight rasp. “Independently? Hm, how long has it been... Five, almost six years?”

Axel whistled low.

The more Roxas talked, the less frequently he drank. Axel had no shortage of questions to prod him with, about being a detective versus joining the police force, about his very limited off-work activities, about his home - “Do you have a pet? I see you as a cat person...” - and about his friends.

“Mostly the same ones I've had since middle school,” Roxas responded, when Axel began probing about non-work related companions (the list of Roxas's 'work friends' had been nonexistent, to Axel's disbelief, though he rightfully pointed out that running your own office as a private investigator didn't open up a lot of room for water cooler chat).

“You dating any of 'em?”

Roxas snorted and started to laugh, thankfully before he'd taken in another mouthful of alcohol.

“So, no,” Axel grinned a little, glad to hear him laugh.

“No,” Roxas confirmed, and glanced at him. “Oh – ”

“Can you see me?” He immediately glanced down at himself.

“Sort of...” Roxas sloshed the bourbon around inside the bottle. “Or maybe this is working.”

They began talking about the possible hallucinogenic properties of supernaturally-influenced bourbon, until Axel steered the conversation back to where he'd guided it.

“So, no weird high school relationships? Weird college relationships?”

“None worth talking about,” Roxas shrugged, eyes straying to Axel very frequently now. He felt better with a face to focus on while in conversation, and he put the lighter back on the table, not feeling as though he needed it with Axel 'back'.

“Not even an anecdote?” Axel complained. “Shame. You know so much about my sexual history, I want dirt on you.”

“I've got nothing on you, sorry,” Roxas snorted, and sounded very insincere about the 'sorry' part.

“Yeah, I am the pinnacle of kink.”

“Have you got any relationships worth telling me about? Besides the one I know, obviously,” Roxas took a drink, giving Axel the floor, but he was shaking his head.

“That was the only one. Saix and I were friends since ninth grade, started dating in tenth.”

Something in Roxas's stomach sank like a rock. “You were together all that time?”

“Well, there was like a seven-month period after high school where we broke up, but that obviously didn't take.”

Roxas lowered the bottle slightly. “What happened?”

“I just started university, he was going to a different one, my mom was checking in on me at random – I think to try to catch me off-guard, like an inspection...” Axel shrugged. “It got tense and we were both busy, so we broke up. 'Til I showed up at his place _really_ drunk and we had sex, and after that Saix told me that if we were gonna fuck like that, we were gonna be exclusive again. Suited me just fine.”

Not quite drunk enough to speak his mind and wonder aloud what kind of basis that made for a relationship, Roxas just asked, “What about outside of sex?”

“Wasn't like in high school when we were hanging out all the time... It was mostly sex and school work.”

“Did you want it to stay like that?”

“Didn't think about it much. It was the way things were. I guess I missed the way we were when we were kids-?” Axel stopped, and narrowed his eyes. “Damn it, Rox, I wanted to snoop into your sex life.”

Roxas hastily lifted the bourbon back up to drink.

“Damn my narcissistic love of talking about myself,” Axel groused.

Swallowing, Roxas latched to a new topic. “I see we've started using nicknames.”

“I considered using 'Detective Hikari', but we're past that.”

“That's fair,” a faint smile played over his lips. “I'm too used to people calling me that. Anyway, it's better than 'Roxy'.”

Axel lit up like he'd just been shown the stairway to heaven, and intended to immediately sin to ruin his chances of ever getting to climb it. “Roxy, huh.”

“Don't you _dare_. I will find an exorcist, I swear to god.”

Laughing, Axel gave in – though he made it clear it wasn't because he'd been threatened – and instead asked about the origins of the nickname. The conversation turned to Roxas's older brother, and the night wore on with a continuous stream of Hikari family anecdotes, and a steady depletion of bourbon until Roxas fell asleep on the couch, snoring like a lawn mower, and Axel thought that after a single day he might have fallen in complete infatuation with the man who'd had to dredge up his corpse.

  


* * *

  


The investigation was hard on them both.

Roxas was, as he'd said, frequently over with the police as a by-the-book investigation was conducted, with the P.I's presence to act as consult. Axel spent a good deal of time checking out what the cops were doing before reporting their conversations or laughably incorrect theories to Roxas, all the while dreading the fast-approaching day that his residence wouldn't be needed anymore.

Saix was under scrutiny, but was affording one of the best lawyers in the city – courtesy of K.H Enterprises, Roxas informed him quietly, when everyone was too busy to notice that he was talking to 'himself'. The case would take a while to get to court, and the process itself could even take years.

When he could get away with it, Roxas lingered behind, sharing anything he'd learned about the paranormal recently. Both the internet and books he could find locally were entirely inconclusive, and he wasn't quite willing to start calling up self-proclaimed 'experts' for advice yet. When it became clear that there was no agreed-upon method for expelling ghosts from a fixed location, the natural conclusion they came to was to try everything. Axel was thoroughly disappointed when he failed to budge the planchette on a Ouija board even slightly.

None of their efforts made the doors and walls any more passable, though, and the end of the house's usefulness to the police was fast-approaching. Axel's possessions were starting to be claimed and cleared from the house.

Once Axel's mother had come by to take his photo albums out of storage (which was a visit Roxas had not been present for, and something Axel didn't want to speak of) everything else had been signed off to police custody.

No one liked to talk about how many little things, easy to store in a jacket or bag, go missing during a police search. Roxas had pocketed the only thing he thought no one would miss, certain Axel would prefer that he have it than some stranger, and was forced to leave the house before he even got a moment alone to tell him goodbye.

That was it. The house would go up for sale, and as nice a thought as renting it himself was, for Roxas it was plainly financially impossible.

Some one else would move in, maybe a family. Maybe Axel would appear to them, too, or maybe, like every other person who entered, he could scream insults about their mothers right to their faces and it would have less effect than empty air.

And Roxas would never see him again.

It took him hours to get to sleep, that night.

Axel was kind of touched by the whole thing, if still confused as to _how the hell_ he got from his prison of a house to Roxas's apartment.

He'd inspected every inch of the tiny bachelor's suite after giving up on yelling for Roxas's attention, but tried not to get too invasive about it – a courtesy that a detective should deeply appreciate, in his opinion. That was as far as he'd decided to extend his good manners, though, back to trying to wake Roxas and get his attention.

“Hey, Roxy,” he leaned over his bedside. “Would you be _really_ pissed if I exploded a light bulb?”

No response. Breathing even, eyelids twitching a little... That wasn't really a sign that he could be stirring.

“... Last resort, maybe,” Axel reached out to brush his fingers over his cheek, careful not to go right through him. Roxas sniffled and turned onto his side, in reflex.

He'd be damned if that just wasn't the cutest thing.

What finally woke Roxas was a loud, echoing _bang_ of unearthly footsteps by his bedroom door, and he sat up in bleary-eyed alarm. “Wha's – ”

“Oh, hey,” Axel brightened, milling near the door and Roxas's dresser. “That worked. Rox?”

Roxas was rubbing his eyes, confusion settling in.

“Maybe not worked, but got your attention, if nothing else,” Axel amended, pacing the room idly and fixating hard on making more noise.

He wasn't imagining or dreaming that, Roxas concluded, throwing off the covers cautiously and getting out of bed.

“C'mon, Roxas, see me,” Axel approached him. “How did it work before... Just, say my name? Call me. I think this is a two-way street.”

“I'm losing it,” Roxas murmured, leaning heavily into the wall and looking as miserable as he was tired.

“Quite possibly, but hey, I'm here for you,” Axel slid one hand down his arm, and Roxas raised his head sharply. He looked right back down at his arm, where Axel's hand should be – he was used to the feel of him, now, but felt stupid for even _suspecting_...

His own hand brushed over the cool, prickling spot, and Axel placed his hand over Roxas's.

“There's no way you're there,” Roxas breathed, only audible due to the surrounding stillness.

“You've had to believe weirder things,” Axel grinned.

Roxas steeled himself with a slow, deep breath. “Fuck it. No one's gonna see me if I'm crazy...” He searched the air for his approximate eye level, and cautiously ventured, “... Axel?”

If he could grin so hard it'd hurt, Axel would have been doing exactly that. “You're only as crazy as I am.”

Roxas jerked back, flat against the wall. “ _Holy shit_...”

“ _Right?_ ” He was laughing.

Axel was laughing, and only hours ago, Roxas was certain he'd never see or hear him ever again. His eyes were huge, backing away a little just in disbelief. “What – What the _fuck?!_ ”

“I don't know how,” Axel said in a rush, and the excitement and relief that had been building since he first felt the _pull_ away from his house was palpable. “When you left my place today, it was like you _dragged_ me with you. I can't get back there anymore, not that I tried very hard...”

“How, though?” Roxas ignored that Axel had already answered that question, too shocked to process. “Nothing changed, I didn't manage to _do_ anything...”

“Who cares! It's a miracle,” Axel declared, with only a touch of sarcasm.

“Yeah, but... How do I know I won't send you somewhere else?” Now that the initial alarm was starting to fade, Roxas's negativity had triggered his logic center back into use. As much as it deflated some of Axel's cheer, he had to admit that was a good point.

“It can't be that the cops started taking things... I took the paper with me the first time I was there, your mother took those boxes...” Roxas rubbed his eyes. “Maybe it's more spiritual than that. Maybe you had to _want_ to go with me bad enough, or vice versa...”

“Vice versa?” Axel was pleased, and a little smug – Roxas had come to find that the two were often linked. “If I had a working heart, it'd have skipped a beat.”

Roxas reddened, sounding caught. “What? You're better off with me than alone in that place with a bunch of strangers who can't see you.”

“I wanted to go with you, too,” Axel assured him, and Roxas gave the blank space a look that was too fond to have any real sting.

“Maybe that's it, then,” he murmured. “Maybe it had to stop being 'home', or something.”

Axel's voice drew nearer. “Guess that means I have a home with you? I can't pay rent, but I won't be a strain on your utilities. Well... Maybe the electric bill.”

Roxas snorted. “If you promise not to blow my lights when you're pissed at me.”

“Never,” he vowed. “I'll just make a lot of obnoxious noise.”

“And no spying on me,” Roxas grinned. “I don't know if this whole disappearing thing is going to keep happening, but if I can't see you, I don't want to end up walking past you naked.”

There were a couple of immediate responses that leapt to mind – 'So you'd walk by naked if I was visible?' or an accusation of hypocrisy over the idea of spying – but Axel instead sighed as though deeply offended. “How could you think that of me.”

“I wonder if this means you can leave if I do,” Roxas mused.

“We can experiment with it?”

“Let's try it now. I'm not gonna sleep any time soon.”

“And I don't sleep! No time like the present.”

As though sensing Axel's grin, Roxas matched it with one of his own and escorted him to the apartment door.

Axel didn't know about him, but he actually didn't find it very surprising to discover that he couldn't leave Roxas's apartment now, instead.

“It doesn't make sense,” Roxas closed the apartment door after him as he came back inside, frowning. “Were you with me the whole trip back? You didn't just...materialize here?”

“I was with you the whole time. I had like, a radius to work with.”

“What, like a reverse restraining order?”

“Love the phrasing. Yeah, I guess.”

Roxas leaned into the wall, hand at his jaw and his pensive 'work' tone in his words. “What was different about the trip here...?”

He recreated it in his mind, Axel not managing to supply anything other than thoughtful noises.

“... All I can think of is 'I was dressed',” Roxas sighed, and was met with the barely-visible but definitely-there smirk on Axel's face.

“Maybe not _dressed_ , but maybe you had something on you,” Axel suggested, going with that train of thought. “Something you had on you when we first met, or something from the house, or – ”

A funny look crossed Roxas's face. “One second.”

Axel watched him go back to his bedroom with mild bewilderment, and stared at him as Roxas came back clutching something in his hand tightly.

“If this works, I swear...” he muttered, and opened the apartment door to take a few steps out, turning and giving Axel an expectant look.

It wasn't that trying to go through _hurt_ , but the sensation of hitting an impenetrable wall was still not something Axel would rank on his list of top ten favorite things. He braced himself, and found the barrier...

Wasn't there.

“Hey!” He spread his arms. “You figured it out?”

“The _lighter?_ ” Roxas looked disbelieving, unfurling his palm to reveal the slender silver lighter he'd taken from Axel's coffee table. “You're tethered to a _lighter?_ I don't believe this...”

Axel gave it a fond look. “Had it eight years and I've only had to refill it twice. That was pretty much the only thing that ever helped me feel better when things got overwhelming,” he sounded like he was talking about his first-born child, or the like. “You _took_ it?”

That caught expression was back. “Yeah, it kind of, uh, reminded me of you. And I thought it'd be a shame if it was just thrown out...”

The fond look was turned on Roxas, now, coupled with that satisfied kind of smirk again. “Good thing you took it.”

“Otherwise you'd be haunting the dump right now,” Roxas let out a short, breathless laugh.

“I owe you my un-life. I swear to god, if I could kiss you right now...” Axel stepped back several paces to allow him back into his apartment.

Roxas was briefly unsure of what to say. “Probably wouldn't have the same novelty, anymore...”

“I mean,” Axel came in a little closer to him, and Roxas thought he was about to test it anyway. “This would be really miserable without you. If I can repay you – Hey, I could come with you on investigations and go through locked doors.”

“Half-ghost detective team?” Roxas snickered. “Sounds like a TV series waiting to happen.”

“I call dibs on the one-liners.”

As they chatted about their new drama-comedy, Roxas went to replace the lighter in his nightstand, getting ready for bed again. Despite his claim that he wouldn't be able to sleep, exhaustion was hitting him hard, and he was sure he wouldn't physically be able to hold open his eyes for much longer.

He took the time to set his alarm, though, and glanced back at Axel. “Hey, so... Since you can leave with me, there's somewhere I want to take you.”

 

* * *

  


Roxas caught a few hours of sleep before his alarm started blaring, having promised to leave the television on low volume overnight and take Axel to his intended destination in the morning. There was a busy street below him and neighbors on all sides, so Roxas was used to tuning out a bit of noise. Having declared all time to be moot in the eyes of the dead, Axel was content to watch reruns of political broadcasts and refrain from exploding the remote control in an attempt to change the channel in the time it took for Roxas to recharge a little.

'Recharging' seemed to be a doomed endeavor when Roxas woke up feeling all the more sluggish, pulling on his clothing and poorly stifling a yawn.

“Wonder if my coffee maker would blow up if you used it,” he grumbled, shuffling out of the bedroom to go slip on his shoes.

“Want me to try?” Axel offered, hanging around the front door. “For science?”

“Nah, should just get going,” Roxas slipped the lighter into one pocket, and his keys into the other. “'Least if I crash, I can only kill one of us.”

“I call shotgun.”

Roxas rolled his eyes, and opened the creaky door as quietly as he could manage. He sure as hell wouldn't want to be disturbed at this hour; it was still dark outside, which was rather the point. Axel slipped through the wall beside him, and – out of respect for the other tenants – Roxas kept his voice to a barely-audible rumble.

“Show off.”

“Flaunt what you've got.”

The ribbing went back and forth once they were in the elevator, and rose to normal speaking volume once they were in the car. There were only a few other cars on the street, traffic still light even when they cut through the downtown area to get to the massive, looming clock tower.

Axel had a feeling that was where they were going, but his unease reached a boiling point when they parked right across from the tower and Roxas slid out of the driver's seat side.

“Uh, Rox...” He was quick to follow, but reservations were apprehensively writ all over his face.

The conversation had done him good at keeping him alert, but Roxas's thoughts were still working at half-speed. “Hm...?”

“Call me a hypocrite, but if you're planning on falling – ”

“Axel,” Roxas cut him off hastily. “I didn't come here to kill myself.”

“Oh, thank god,” he let out a loud, whistling breath. Roxas bristled a little, but the feeling passed quickly, grudgingly supposing he could see why that had been his first thought.

“I guess I should have clarified that.”

“Shouldn't have assumed... Death just happens to be on my mind a lot,” Axel followed him across the empty street. “Not to mention, the sun's not even up, doesn't look like there's anyone around for ages...”

“Yeah, that's the idea,” Roxas opened the doors to the visitor's entrance. “You haven't ever been up there before, have you?”

Axel shook his head. “Never thought about a clock tower's appeal.”

Roxas had a very brief, private smile, which dissolved the moment he started to mount the steps. “Shit, didn't factor in that it's been about ten years,” he groaned. “This is gonna be embarrassing...”

“Nonsense, you're plenty spry,” Axel stated, concealing a grin behind Roxas's back.

“This'll make up for all the times I've skipped the gym recently,” he gripped the railing, hauling his sleep-deprived body into action.

“Will it help your ego if I make the occasional strained noise?” Axel was practically floating up the steps, already getting ahead of him.

“Don't patronize me,” Roxas glowered, and made the slow climb up the insurmountable steps with the occasional pause to catch his breath. Axel chatted as they ascended, holding a conversation entirely on his own regarding the implementation of an escalator or express elevator to cater to the physically disabled. Roxas only half-listened, and found himself sore and winded by the time he reached the 'No Public Access' door he was so familiar with, light starting to shine dimly into the stairwell.

Practiced with the old lock, he yanked at the door handle to force it upwards and got the door to jolt open. “Huh,” he grinned, suddenly finding the aches worth it. “Still just as easy.”

“You rebel,” Axel sounded like he approved.

“Technically, it was my friend Hayner who showed us this first. Think he learned it from some older kid, though...” Roxas scoffed to himself, letting the door slam shut behind him as he walked the tower's ledge. “'Kid', god. He's probably like, thirty-five now.”

Axel snickered, eyes still mostly on Roxas. “Sounds like a punk. My kind of thirty-five year old.”

With a little laugh, Roxas found 'his spot' on the ledge, turning out to look at the brilliant pink-shot sky. Orange was creeping up into the navy, thin clouds lit up dazzlingly over the cityscape and outlining the taller buildings in a halo.

Axel stared out at it. “... It's kind of really beautiful.”

“Yeah,” Roxas sat down with a tiny grunt of strain on his knees, looking out as well. “Never really bought into the whole watching-the-sunrise thing until I saw it like this.”

Sinking down beside him, Axel let his gaze slowly lower from the sky to the world below.

Everything looked...unreal, from here. Like toys on a sprawling play mat. Without meaning to, his mind was back on the idea of jumping from this point, and he murmured, “I can see why you'd want to go with _this_ view.”

“Right?” Roxas sighed, a little wistfully. “I thought it'd feel like I was sinking right into the sky.” He glanced at Axel and quickly tacked on, “But I'm still not going to.”

Axel's expression was briefly one of gratitude, and they were silent for a little bit while the clouds spread themselves out even thinner and the glow of daylight engulfed the rest of the stars.

“If you ever decide to ditch my lighter,” Axel mused aloud, “I wouldn't hate it if you hid it up here.”

“Might be the safest place for it, but I don't have any plans to ditch you,” Roxas was a little confused as to where that came from.

“Good,” he leaned back, staring up at the sky. “I'm right where I want to be.”

It was too early to fight down a blush, Roxas relented. He just had to accept that this one was going to happen, and wonder when and why he started feeling like a teenager again. Voice a bit higher, he teased, “Maybe I'll leave you up here if I ever bring a date home for the night.”

Axel glanced at him sharply. “Are you, uh, planning on dating?”

“Not really,” Roxas shook his head quickly. “Just didn't want to sound like a complete loser.”

A bit relieved, Axel grinned. “If you do, you could let me stick around and literally live vicariously through you.”

“... Wait, like-...” Roxas gave him a meaningful look, and it was mostly one of warning.

“That'd be kinda hard to explain to all parties involved,” Axel laughed wickedly. “I'm thinking 'never again' on the possession front.”

“No kidding,” Roxas narrowed his eyes. Considering how that'd made his hand feel... On occasion, he still felt like it wasn't _moving_ quite the way he wanted it to, and in those times he cursed Axel's name with a complete lack of malice.

“Seriously, though – if you do wind up... I don't know. Settling down, having two kids, moving out to the country? I'd be cool with that. I don't want to hold you back,” Axel impressed.

The only reason Roxas took a second to really think about it was because Axel seemed so earnestly concerned. “Honestly, I've never pictured my life going that way. Even before the whole ghost roommate thing.”

“Yeah?” He was curious. “What did you picture?”

“Pretty much what it is now, just with enough money to move to a bigger place every few years.”

Anyway, he privately considered, his romantic prospects dropped from low to zero if he was going to frequently be chatting to the air beside him.

Axel gave him a look. “Man, it's a good thing I died. At least I'll be able to keep things interesting.”

“That's...one way of looking at it,” Roxas said dubiously.

“Silver linings, Rox,” he looked up at the clouds. “Though they look more gold, from here.”

“Even better.”

Axel's hand slid closer, only really suggesting touch without subjecting Roxas to the strangeness and cold of contact.

“Dying actually might have been the best thing to ever happen to me. No,” he corrected himself. “Not dying. You're the best thing to ever happen to me.”

Roxas didn't look away from the sunrise, cheeks burning to match the deep pink light. While he didn't overlap their hands, he edged it a tiny bit closer, nerves prickling pleasantly with just the tangible suggestion of touch. “...Same goes for you, actually.”

The sun had finally crested over the horizon, and the two of them were still. The only signs of life around them were the far-below sounds of a city starting to awaken, and a constant rolling breeze. Roxas sank back, when the best of the sunrise – in his opinion – had passed, and his eyelids were protesting remaining open.

Axel remained upright, staring down at the ground below again. Face backwards and rock back and forth, Roxas had said, until eventually he just fell... Axel was already dead, and wouldn't suffer any repercussions for trying it. Not real ones. He thought about getting up and trying it, just to see what it was like, but... Maybe he'd meet a barrier if he tried. Or, if he didn't, he could still reach the ground and risk difficulties coming back up here.

No – he was just fine where he was.

“Hey, Axel... Think I'm gonna sleep a bit more, if that's okay with you,” Roxas began to close his eyes. “That walk was murder... Uh, figuratively.”

Axel snickered. “Yeah... You sleep. I'll be here.”

Roxas hummed a little, warmed by the sun and heavy with fatigue.

This was the most content he could remember feeling in a long time, he sleepily noted, and his breathing evened out and became slow. Axel eventually looked away from the sky and the ground, instead watching the rise and fall of his chest.

This arguably would have been better for the both of them if he was alive, he determined. Neither of them could know how long it would be before one or the other got fed up with the restrictions of this, and both knew there was no guarantee that Axel would remain as he was, lighter or no. Nothing about this would be easy, but he didn't think it really mattered one way or the other. Dead or alive, this was still the most he'd ever been able to feel.

A heartbeat seemed a small price to pay, for that.


End file.
